January 10 and 26, 1900 






MEMORIAL ADDRE 



LIFE AND CHARACTER 



GARRET A. HOBART 



SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



FIF1 \ -SI XTH CONG K ESS, 
First Sessh in. 



WASHINGTOM : 

GOVERNMEN1 PRINTING ol 
igoo. 



CONTENTS. 



I'mree'line,^ in the Senate 5 

Address of — 

Mi SEWELL, of New Jerse} 9 

Mr. Daniel, of Virginia 16 

Mr. DEFEW, of New York 22 

Mr. C0CKRELL, of Missouri 29 

Mr. Cullom, of Illinois 34 

Mr. Davis, of Minnesota 39 

Mr. Morgan, of Alabama . 43 

Mr. Chandler, of New Hampshire . ... 48 

Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts 54 

Mr. Caffery, of Louisiana ... 60 

Mr. ALLEN, of Nebraska 63 

Mr. Kean, of New Jersey 67 

Proceedings in the House of Representatives 73 

Address of 

Mr. STEWART, of New Jersey 77 

Mr. Payne, of New York So 

Mr. DALZELL, of Pennsylvania 85 

Mr. Brosius, of Pennsylvania 91 

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Tennessee . . . . 96 

Mr. PARKER, of New Jersey [CO 

Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa 106 

Mr. Daly, of New Jersey ...... . .. 115 

Mr. Fowler, of New Jersey 125 

Mr. Glynn, of New York 1211 

Mr Salmon, of New Jersey 130 

Mr. Grosvenor, of Ohio 139 

Mr. Gardner, of New Jersey 144 

3 



Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



Proceedings in the Senate. 

December 4, 1S99. 

Mr. SEWELL. Mr. 1'ivsident, it becomes my painful duty 
to announce to the Senate the death of Garret A. Hobart, 
of New Jersey, Vice-President of the United States and pre- 
siding officer of this body, and to offer the resolutions which 
I send to the desk. 

The President pro tempore. The resolutions will be 
read. 

The Secretary read the resolutions, as follows: 

Resolved, Thai n ceived with the deepest regret informa- 

tion oi the death of Garret Augustus Hobart, late Vice-President of 
the United States. 

,/, That the business of the Senate be suspended in order that 
tin- distinguished publii deci ised and the virtm 

private character may Ik- fittingly commemorated. 

•, 'i'li. it tin Secretary oi the Senate be instructed to communi- 
cate tins,- resolutions to tin- House of Representatives. 

Mr. SEWELL. I ask that the resolutions may lie mi the 
table, tu he called up by me at a convenient season in the 
near future. 

The President pro tempore. It will he so ordered. 

Mi. K.EAN. Mr. President, I move, as a further mark of 
respect tu the memory of the late Vice-President, that the 
Senate do now adjourn. 



6 Proceedings in the Senate. 

The motion was unanimously agreed to; and (at 12 
o'clock and 30 minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned until 
to-morrow, Tuesday, December 5, 1S99, at 12 o'clock 
meridian. 

December 11, 1S99. 
Air. CtALUNGER submitted the following resolution; 
which was referred to the Committee to Audit and Control 
the Contingent Expenses of the Senate : 

Ri wived, That the Secretary of the Senate he, and he hereby is, author- 
1 ed and directed to pay from the miscellaneous items of the contingent 
fund of the Senate the actual and necessary expenses incurred liv direction 
of tile President pro tempore in arranging lor and attending the funeral 
of the late Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate, 
('.arret A. Hobart, at Paterson, X. J., on the 25th of November, 1S99, upon 
vouchers to be approved by the Committee to Audit and Control the 
Contingent Expenses .if the Senate. 

December 13, 1899. 

Mr. JONES of Arkansas, from the Committee to Audit and 
Control the Contingent Expenses of the Senate, to whom 
was referred the resolution submitted by Air. Gallinger on 
the nth instant, reported it without amendment; and it 
was considered by unanimous consent, and agreed to, as 
follows: 

,/. That the Secretary of the Senate be, and he hereby is, author- 
ized and directed t.. pay from the miscellaneous items of the contingent 
fund of the Senate the actual and necessary expenses incurred by direction 
..f the President pro tempore in arranging fur and attending the funeral 
of the late Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate, 
I rai mi A. Hobart, at Paterson, N. J., on the 25th of November, 1S99, upon 
vouchers t.. be approved by the Committee to Audit and Control the 
Contingent Expenses of the Senate. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 

January ro, [900. 
The Chaplain, Rev. W. H. Milburn, I). D., offered the 
following prayer: 

O Thou in whose hand our breath is and whose are all 

our ways, as the Senate meets to-day to pay its tribute of 
respect and affection to the memory of our late beloved 
Vice-President, a man whose generous nature, sunny temper, 
and friendly ways endeared him to all who were brought in 
contact with him, grant that the men who speak may set 
forth the feeling not only of the Senate but of the whole 
country. 

Hear our devout prayer in behalf of the wife who has 
been widowed, and of the son who has been rendered father- 
less. Uphold and steer them in their unspeakable bereave- 
ment. And let this great sorrow, which has touched so 
many homes and hearts, come to us with the sense that 
there is a future where God's sons and daughters are gath- 
ered in immortal peace and blessedness, where are no tears, 
nor sorrow, nor grief. We pray through Jesus Christ, our 
Saviour. Amen. 

The President pro tempore. The Chair lavs before the 
Senate resolutions which will be read. 

The Secretary read the resolutions submitted by Mr. 

Sewell December 4, 1899, as follows: 

Resolved, That the Senate has received with the deepest regret infor- 
mation of tlie death of Garret Augustus Hobart, late Vice-President 
of the United States. 



8 Proceedings in the Senate. 

Resolved, That the business of the Senate be suspended in order that 
the distinguished public services of the deceased and the virtues of his 
private character may be fittingly commemorated. 

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate be instructed to communicate 
these resolutions to the House of Representatives. 

The resolutions were considered by unanimous consent, 
and agreed to. 



Address of Mr. Sewell, of New Jersey. 



SEWELL, OF NEW JERSEY. 

Mr. President, there are occasions in the life of men and 
of nations when we turn from the turmoil of civil duties to 
heboid the work of the reaper, Death; there are times of 
solemnity and bereavement, when language cannot portray 
the emotions of the soul; there are periods when sadness, 
like a tidal wave, sweeps over a people with resistless force; 
there are experiences which beget bitter though unavailing 
tears and vain regret that, like the breath of winter, is 
fraught with desolation. 

Who can glory in his strength, or stretch forth his hand 
and sta) the Angel of Death? Who can defy the dread 
summons to join the innumerable host whose way lies 
through the portals of the tomb? Who can tell the day or 
the hour when his earthly estate shall be closed and an 
account rendered of the deeds done in the body? 

The uncertainty of human life looms up ever ' 
and seems to make all human achievements futi 
worthless, but this is only apparently so. Men p, 
but their works endure. The body may be la: 
grave, but the rich legacj of lessons and infmenc 

a good, brave, honorable man remain to us and to 
our children. The >ubtle, powerful, though silent, influ- 
of such a life bear perennial harvests which death 
cannot destroy. 

Our beloved Vice-President has been taken from us, and 
the nation mourns his loss. The patriotic citizen, the able 
statesman, the wise counselor, the honorable man, the 



lefore us 




1 in the 


:s of the 



io Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

devoted father, has passed away, and the wail of the people 
will not return to us the departed. The consolation of 
religion, the teaching of faith, our inborn conviction of 
immortality, may assuage our grief and temper our sorrow, 
but this is a wound which cannot be healed. 

We have appointed this day, Mr. President, to pay our 
high official and personal tribute of respect to the memory 
of our late associate and honored dead and to publish to the 
world his sterling integrity and worth. L,et us calmly 
review his life, services, and character, in which we may 
find much that will profit us. 

Garret Augustus Hobart was born in 1844, at L,ong 
Branch, X. J. It has been well said that the blood which 
flowed in his veins was from good English stock and was 
mingled with the martyr blood of Dutch and Huguenot 
ancestors and that the spirit of fidelity and courage was 
his by inheritance. The happy domestic environment 
in which he lived, enriched by keen intellectuality and 
literary culture, had much to do with the formation of his 
character. 

He received the benefits of a common-school education, 
finally graduating from Rutgers College, New Brunswick, 
in 1863. He then became a school-teacher for a brief 
period, when he commenced the study of the law, in which 
profession he attained considerable eminence. Though his 
means were meager in the early years of his life journey, 
his natural endowments were such that wealth and success 
rewarded his toil. 

His first public office was that of city counsel of Paterson 
in 1871, and in the following year lie was made counsel of 
the board of freeholders of his couutv. He was elected a 



. Iddress of Mr. Sewell, of New Jerst y. 1 1 

member of the house of assembly of New Jersey in 1872, 
reelected in 1873, and attained by his ability and popular- 
ity the office of speaker of that body in 1874. He was 
elected a State senator in 1876, and reelected in [879. 
During his six years' service in the State senate he was 
twice chosen its president. In 18S3 he was the nominee of 
his party for the United States Senate. In 1884 ne became 
a member of the National Republican Committee, and 
served as such until his decease. He was nominated at the 
national Republican convention in 1896 fur the Vice-Presi- 
dency, and triumphantly elected, and was sworn into office 
11 Washington March 4, [897. He enjoyed the high dis- 
tinction of his office but a brief period of years, his death 
occurring the 21st of November last. 

Mr. Hobart was removed from his earthly career at an 
age when the magnificent status of his manh 1 was reach- 
ing its prime; when tii. g-i mdi lements of his character were 
ripening to their full development; when his great useful- 
ness to the nation was becoming more and more apparent; 
at an age when his life, chastened by sorrow, hallowed by 
ition, and tem] . had b< en attuned 
to that key whose sweetness and force reverberated through 
the hearts and lives of all with whom he came in contact. 

His public duties wen marked by zeal and devotion to the 
interests of the people, and some of the most salutan and 

effective measures lipon the statute 1 ks of \ev. 

were tlu- result of his efforts. He sought in his legislative 
career to cheek illegal expenditures and to reduce local and 
State taxation: to encourage manufactures and promote 
those- enterprises which now place New Jersey in the front 
tank of States. Educational and philanthropic institutions 



12 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

received his special assistance, and he was one of the lead- 
ing supporters of the general railroad law of his State, 
which is one of the most effective of its character. The 
general welfare, rather than the conserving of private inter- 
ests, engaged his time and attention. 

His shrewdness, sagacity, and promptness soon won him 
an enviable reputation that was not confined to the limits 
of his city, while the value of his counsel was defined by 
the complicated matters intrusted to his care; difficult and 
arduous duties were so satisfactorily performed by him as 
to gain the thanks of the public, and so popular had he 
become that public honors were thrust upon him. 

He was a lifelong Republican, and his political views 
were the fruit of sound judgment, experience, and consci- 
entious thought. 

The performance of his duties as President of the Senate 
has ever evoked the favorable criticism of the members of 
this body, ami the justice and fairness of his rulings have 
elicited their warmest commendation. Neither the partial- 
ity of friendship nor the interest of individuals has warped 
his judgment or tinctured his decisions. His manner of 
going and coming amongst us was marked by kindliness and 
consideration. No word of censure, no carping criticism, 
mi ungenerous reflection escaped his lips; but his constant 
desire to help and assist in every proper way was always 
manifest. 

The character of Mr. Hobart was as the open day — 
neither darkness nor shadow rested upon it. Like a beauti- 
ful landscape, its varied features were plainly seen — there 
was nothing hidden that should be revealed ; there was 
nothing concealed that should be known. Roekribbed by 



Address of Mr. Sewell, of New Jersey. 13 

integrity and probity, his conduct was ever just and honor- 
able. The dignity of his manhood spurned all that was 
mean and worthless, and his virtues lent a charm of manner 
and social attractiveness that gave him preeminence. 

The page of his life was clearly written and without blot 
or stain, though tinged by sadness for the loss of a dear 
child from his fireside. His record is unchallenged. The 
breath of suspicion or the shafts of obloquy could not reacli 
it : the rancor of aspersion could not touch it. 

Malignity and vindictiveness found there no entrance; 
but rather his life was rounded out by kindness and love 
for all men. His loyalty to truth, his fealty to duty, his 
unswerving devotion to the interests of his constituents 
have carved for him in the hearts of men an endurino- tablet. 
His acts of mercy and philanthropy, though many, were 
unproclaimed— like the gentle dew of heaven, they nour- 
ished the sterile soil of human poverty and lifted up the 
downcast and (alien. He recognized the fact that human 
justice and benevolence have not as yet eliminated charity 
from the social fabric. The enmity evolved bj the heat of 
partisanship and political strife passed by him as an idle 
wind. Sensitive to reproach and injur}', his sympathy 
reached out to those who were maligned and forbade the 
entrance of resentment. The even tenor of his way was 
illumined by a radiance born of noble aspirations and high 
( nd< avor. 

Fate links sui : : even j„ | ljs ], m . 

estate, may see the stamp of Heaven. 

My personal relations with Mr. Hobart covered ,1 long 
period of years, extending from his early manhood. It 
seems to me now as a golden chain, each link of which 



14 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

constitutes a pleasant service performed or some valuable 
assistance rendered. His solicitude for the welfare of his 
friends caused him many personal sacrifices. His heart, his 
brain, his purse, were welcome to all that needed them — 
"his pity gave ere charity began." 

His generous hospitality and good cheer flowed in a con- 
tinuous stream that found its source in the benevolence of 
his heart. The happiness of others was dearer to him than 
his own, and the cardinal principles of his creed were sym- 
pathy and kindness. He loved to do good, and sought 
opportunities to accomplish it. His word was his bond, 
and those who knew him best asked no other security. 
His course in life indicated obedience to duty and resigna- 
tion — duty, nobly performed, toward his neighbor and to 
himself; resignation to whatever might betide, cheerfully 
and willingly displayed. 

Amid tlie common current of men and affairs, in the daily 
routine of personal and civic functions, in the exercise of 
refined and extended social relations, and in the nearer and 
dearer ties of home the voice of duty prevailed. In sorrow, 
in disappointment, in the struggle with disease and battle 
for his life, though sustained by an unflinching energy, 
resignation pointed the way. Though we indulge the bril- 
liant flow of rhetoric, impassioned by the glow of memory; 
though we strike the minor chord of eloquence, touched by 
the poignancy of grief; though we utter a lofty strain of 
thought, inspired by personal association, yet to me these 
two words, "duty" and "resignation," seem the leading- 
exponents of his nature. 

Ah, Mr. President, we need no inspiration to show that so 
noble a soul cannot taste of annihilation ; we need no divine 



Address of Mr. Sewell, oj New Jersey. 15 

revelation to prove that such a spirit can not pass to the 
realms of oblivion and nothingness; we need no testimony 
from the dead that immortality is the reward of such a life. 
Could we harbor the thought that the reverse were not true, 
it would wring the very fiber of our nature and proclaim 
its falsity. Mr. HOBART has passed to the better and 
higher life that lies beyond the confines of mortality — a 
life tlie span of which, unmeasured by the flight of years, 
is filled with immortal significance and joy. 

Tlie lessons of his life, whose pleasant remernbram 
even death of its sadness, let us treasure, and may they 
prove a stimulating influence in tlie conduct of our own. 



Life ami Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. DANIEL, OF VIRGINIA. 

Mr. President, this body is a miniature of onr country. 
In it is represented both the equality of the States and the 
unity of the nation. Large and small States, rich and poor 
States, populous and thinly settled States, all alike have 
two Senators, and each Senator has one vote. But when 
we look toward the Chair we behold another ideal of the 
Constitution incarnate. The Vice-President of the United 
States, chosen by all the electors of all the States, is Presi- 
dent of the Senate. By him is represented here, as 1>v the 
Federal President is represented in the nation, the suprem- 
acy and authority of the United States. And as each of the 
States appears here as an equal block in the arch of our 
federated system, so our President would seem to us the 
keystone, binding- together in power and grace the tall col- 
umns of indestructible States, which in his office are vis- 
ibly linked in indissoluble union. 

From the foundation of our Government the people have 
called to this great office men of character and attainment. 
Rarely indeed has any mistake been made in the selection, 
and from Adams and Jefferson to Stevenson and Hobart 
we ma}- scan witli general satisfaction the illustrious roll. 
Yet I venture to say that the office was never filled by one 
who met all of its responsibilities with more equal and 
uniform sufficiency or discharged its duties with more 
acceptability to all concerned than did our beloved and 
lamented friend, Garret A. Hobart, who has now passed 
forever hence where no storm shall roll or billows beat 
across his peaceful breast. 



Address of Mr. Daniel, of I 'ire; in in. 17 

Few of us knew him, and few indeed had ever seen him 
before he appeared on inauguration day, the 4th of March, 
1897, to take the oath of office. But his genial, manly 
countenance, beaming with health, intelligence, and good 
nature, and the unaffected dignity of the refined and 
accomplished gentleman which characterized his bearing 
were a pleasing introduction before personal presentations 
were made, and as soon as he assumed his duties it was 
evident that the gavel was in a master's hand. 

Nothing that happened in this Hall escaped the eye of 
his akrt attention. No "occasion Midden" ever over- 
mastered the resources of his ready information or ruffled 
his even, well-trained mind, lie conducted business with 
composure, facility, accuracy, and expedition. His inborn 
-v and fairness approaches and suppressed 

the temptation to unseemly wrangle, while his clear and 
sympathetic perception and his prompt action attested the 
virtues and bore the fruits of the decisive character. 

This combination of excellent qualities made our late 
president the model presiding officer of a deliberative 
assembly. And the fact speaks more than .words could 
utter that throughout his service of well-nigh three years, 
with oft-repeated trials of his equanimity, his patience, and 
his skill, not a single incident occurred that mars the 
in' , iiories in which his good name and fame are enshrined. 

lint such a body as this, diverse in its antecedents, his- 
tories, environments, and opinions, and representing such 
diverse and oft conflicting interests, needs in its presiding 
officer more than the expert and tactful parliamentarian. 
When the technique of the hook and the drill and the 
school find their terminus, wisdom in the practical and 
S. Doc. t s 2 



18 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

involved affairs of men often finds its largest and most fer- 
tile field of tillage. That exalted station filled by union- 
idealizing union — and designed in its institution to con- 
duce to the sentiment, the justice, and the harmony of 
union, cannot be roundly filled save by one of broad and 
generous social instinct, imbued with the spirituality of 
the friend, the patriot, and the statesman. "Great empires 
and small minds," said Edmund Burke, "go ill together," 
and in such a place the ill fit would be no less than a 
national calamity. 

I do not believe there was any member of this body who 
did not regard the late Vice-President as a friend, for he 
was a friendly man, a social man, a neighbor-like man, 
given, as we have been toid, to the large charities which 
his success made possible, but given, as we know, to the 
small, sweet courtesies of life, which are perennial char- 
ities, given to hospitality, and to all those gracious ways 
that attract and cement friendship. That he was a patriot 
none will question. And that he was a pronounced party 
mail. «>r, if you please, a partisan, cannot detract from his 
merit as man or statesman in the esteem of honorable and 
candid men. 

In our strenuous American life, boiling over with the 
vast activities, the keen competitions, and the boundless 
aspirations that free government stimulates in a land of 
opportunity, with new problems continually springing up 
for solution, and startling changes bursting unannounced 
upon the scene, we must of necessity dwell in perpetual 
conflicts of opinion. 

But these conflicts are swiftly followed by settlements at 
the polls and the evolution of new conflicts again and 



Address oj Mr. Daniel^ of Virginia. 19 

ind evermore again in endless succession, each one 
being but an introductory skirmish to a broader field and a 
heavier battle. 

1 >:' such conditions the partisan is alike the cause, the 
product, and the essential solvent. Instead of denouncing 
the differences of opinion which make him, we should ever 
recall that these differences are evoked, stimulated, and 
resolved by the fret government which lives, moves, and 
has its being in them, and that its prime ofhce is to tolerate, 
protect, and foster them. In this respect such government 
is in unison with the eternal order of Cod's providence, 
which through difference and opposition brings forth what 
is truest and best and makes them the resultant four in 
consonance with the ruling principle of the universal thought. 

The clashing swords of warriors, the opposing stones of 
the millers, the upper and lower teeth of animals, the nega- 
tive and positive poles of electricity, the centripetal and cen- 
trifugal tendencies of gravitation, the opposing arguments 
and votes of debaters — all these are hut diversities of the 
powers which pervade the physical, moral, and intellectual 
being, and to rebuke or suppress difference of opinion is a 
species of infidelity to, and revolt against, the decrees 
of the Creator. 

Despotism is sad and hateful, because it freezes the inner 
impulses and paralyzes the movements of the vasl and com- 
plex mechanism of providential development; and freedom 
is joyful and lovable, because it looses to their fitting work 
all the divine forces implanted in the heart of ma;: 
the heart of nature. 

Vet differences must unite, oppositions must eventuate, 
debate must cease, results must be obtained ; and freedom. 



2o Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

when it has been exercised, but fulfills and verifies itself in 
bowing to and obeying the overweening thought of the 
majority. 

This thought is freedom's crown. It inheres in the great 
office which our departed friend was chosen to till and which 
he exalted by the manner in which he filled it. 

The very gravest questions of world-wide interest passed 
to their solution beneath his gavel. War and peace were 
alike proclaimed within the brief period of his career as 
Vice-President. But, more than this, every vestige of leg- 
islation was wiped away from our statute books that marked 
the bygone asperity of internecine conflict. 

In all the momentous scenes of which he was an impor- 
tant part his influence for good was felt and was profoundly 
and heartily appreciated. Nothing harsh, fierce, or sardonic; 
nothing narrow, bigoted, or intolerant, was in his composi- 
tion or shadows his history. It is a blessing to all the land 
that such a man has filled such a place. And having filled 
it well, and filled well the measure of his days, he sleeps 
well now in the noble Commonwealth of his nativity, which 
gave him to the Union, and to which the Union, made 
more perfect and fraternal by his life, hath now returned his 
honored dust. 

It was my sad privilege, with my colleagues, to follow 
his bier. No gilded pomp or ostentatious show blighted 
tin- simplicity of the last scene; but the multitudes gathered 
from far and wide in mighty concourse, the great officers of 
the nation and of the State alike mingled with them in 
their unaffected sorrow, and with the beautiful service of the 
church to which he belonged he was laid to his earthly rest. 

Who could have witnessed that impressive scene, where 



Address of Mr. Daniel, of Virginia. 21 

wealth and power and art and skill and all loving kindness 
despaired that they could do no more, without being pene- 
trated with the littleness of human life; without seeing 
again its realistic emblem in the grass which springeth up in 
the morning and in the evening is cut down and withereth? 
Vet there crept into the thought, a- ever when it pauses 
puzzled, baffled, cast down, and set at naught in its finite 
reachings forth to -rasp the infinite mystery, and even as 
a soft, inarticulate whisper from the Everlasting Throne 
mightsteal upon the ear, the ideal and aspiration of immor- 
tality. 

That poor, shrunken form, hidden away beneath the 
flowers of the earth, did not seem to us to be him th.it we 
had known. Nor was it. Where the flash of intellect? 
Where the steadfast purpose graved upon the face? Where 
tlu- smile of genuine, sweet nature? Dead, do we say? 
But we say not that of the electricity which has Hashed its 
up ige through a wire and left the wire stolid and cold 
and dead and dumb. Neither can we say it of the soul, 
which has so left the body which it quickened. 

That body is given back to its place— the dust from 
which it sprung — and there not to cease to be, but only to 
change its form and resolve into its elements. Whence 
the soul that has left the bod) ? In the dim centuries 
long bygone — before He spoke as never man spoke — the 
mswered, for he had pondered as we ponder yet, and 
even as the dead and forgotten generations pondered before 
him, and as the unborn generations will ponder after us; 
and thus he said: 

That which has grown in mi tlu- earth to the earth- 
But that which has sprung from heavi til 



Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. DEPEW, OF NEW YORK. 

Mr. President, in mid-ocean, on one of the great steam- 
ships, some years ago, a gentleman extended his hand and 
said: "I am GARRET A. Hobart, of New Jersey. I knmv 
you and want you to know me." Afterwards, in the confi- 
dences of fellow-passengers on the sea, he said: ' ' The value 
of success is not so much in the things it enables you to do 
as the consideration it gives you in the minds of others. I 
have been successful, and I want that understood and appre- 
ciated." In this incident came out the character of the man. 
The freshness, the frankness, the unspoiled joy of the boy, as 
happy over the things which gave pleasure and importance 
to his friends, as he felt sure they would be over his own 
advancement. 

The financial distress which caused hard times in 1894 
and 1S95 produced a widespread spirit of pessimism and 
despair. It resurrected the question, "Is life worth the 
living?" which had been discussed nightly at Athenian 
dinners in the time of Plato and Socrates. The doubt is 
not American. Its most emphatic affirmation is evidenced 
in the life and career of our friend. Me was an illustration 
of what is possible under American conditions and with 
American opportunities, with ecptal laws for all, and no 
class or privilege barring the way to the highest places in 
the land. At 19 he was a graduate of Rutgers College, a 
little while teaching school and then studying law; and at 
25 he was called to the bar and began his battle with and in 
the world. Without money or influence, but with brains, 
education, health, industry, and character, his was the 



Address of Mr. Depew, oj New York. 23 

typical beginning of most of the youth of our country. 
His confidence in himself and his future led to an early 
marriage and an ideal domestic life. 

At 53 he was among the foremost citizens of his State in 
every department of its activities. He was a leader in his 
profession of the law and of his political party; he had 
been repeatedly honored by his fellow-citizens in positions 
of trust and power; he had accumulated a fortune and was 
Vice-President of the United States. The idle and the 
incompetent will find no comfort here for their favorite 
theory that life is luck. He had the good fortune to be 
decended from that mixed Dutch-English ancestry which 
has the inspiration of glorious traditions of civil and reli- 
gious liberty, of literature and adventure, of art and arms, 
of indomitable endurance, of conquest over all obstacles, and 
of strenuous endeavor which no difficulties can discourage. 

It wa> his happy lot to have his career to work out in this 
Republic and in the latter half of this marvelous nineteenth 
century. With these advantages, common to millions, tor- 
tune withdrew her assistance, and the brilliant example we 
contemplate was the result of the energj and ability of this 
fine specimen of a self-made man. At the threshold of his 
career, by profession and membership, he proclaimed him- 
self a Christian, and as he began so he continued until his 
death, a consistent child of the Church. His was not the 
a which in Jonathan Edwards's period filled the 
churches with terror and in our time empties their pews, hut 
the religion of the Evangelist Moody, which rests upon th< 
ferring always his own way, he recog- 
nized with a broad charity that the paths pursued l>v others 
led to the same heaven and could be more easilv trod by 



24 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

them. He had no aggressive faith which fought on dogma 
other creeds and sects, but he was at all times active in the 
good works which are common to all creeds and all sects. 

The scholar in politics is the familiar theme for academic 
discussion. His duty to participate all admit, his useful- 
ness is often doubted. He too frequently lacks that touch 
with affairs and knowledge of men which are necessary to 
give him the weight in party councils due to his character 
and culture. The business man in polities is the hope of 
the present and future. The measures we carry here are 
reflected in the markets of the world and react upon the 
farm, the factory, the furnace, and the mine. Their influ- 
ence for good or evil is felt in every home. They tie gov- 
ernment and its policies so closely to the manufacturer, 
merchant, farmer, and mechanic that business is politics 
and politics is business. Men of fortune or of large affairs 
often affect contempt for those in public life and denounce 
with unbridled license the conduct of national, State, and 
municipal matters. They complain bitterly of taxes and 
the burden of government. They are entitled to no sym- 
pathy. They are suffering, if at all, from their own want 
of appreciation of their duties as citizens and of patriotism. 

Mr. HOBART was, during his whole career, the lawyer 
and man of business, who keenly understood and labori- 
ously lived up to a high ideal of citizenship. His party 
found him at the caucus and at the polls. He had time 
for conventions and public meetings. He could promote 
the best interests of his State by service in its legislature, 
or remain in retirement while working diligently for the 
nomination and election of those best fitted for the offices 
to be filled. Charles James Fox said of Edmund Burke 



Addr, m oj Mr. Dep, a>, 0/ New York. 25 

that "he was right, but right too soon." His speeches 
emptied the House of Commons in his time, but in our 
day are text-book and manual for British statesmen. 
Statesmen and reformers of this prophetic order sow the 
seed, but they do not govern. Wendell Phillips, Lloyd 
Garrison, Lovejoy, and John Brown created conditions 
which made it possible for Lincoln to act. Successful 
leaders grapple with the workaday elements about them 
and, combining the conscience and intelligence of the 
hour, solve the problems which more immediately concern 
their constituents and their country. 

The Vice-President was of this class. He was not troubled 
with illusions nor bound by theories. He pitied the man 
win- perpetually longs for the good old times and mourns 
the decadence of the present, and sympathized with the tar 
more useful one who is providing for the unborn millions 
coming century. His lot was with neither. Acute 
questions — financial, industrial, international, or moral — 
are always knocking at the door. Theinsettlement is vital 
to the position of the country among nations, or to the com- 
fort and happiness of its people. Mr. Hobart was not a 
prophet, but he was among the master 
workmen who, as the years go by, slowly perfect the struc- 
government by providing for its present needs and 
are digging trenches or leading the assault against those 
who would destroy it. 

The Joint Traffic Association was a conference of the 
thirty-seven railroads which carry the traffic of the country 
between the interior and the Atlantic coast. Their quarrels 
and rate cutting injured their investors, demoralized busi- 
ness, and promoted trusts. The members were not capital- 



26 Life and ( Invader of Garret A. Hobart. 

ists nor speculators, but the hard-headed and able managers 
of these corporations who had come up from the ranks and 
adopted the operation of railways as both a career and a 
profession. Their efforts to cure the evils of the situation 
were doomed to failure from the jealousies of large com- 
panies and the fear of small ones and the lack of any power 
to enforce their agreements. 

By unanimous vote they selected Garret A. Hobart as 
arbitrator. The questions submitted to him involved the 
revenue of the disputants and the movement by one route 
or another of a vast volume of freight. No judge ever held 
office by so precarious a tenure or had to decide more im- 
portant matters. The defeated litigant could refuse to sub- 
mit or, by carrying a charge of injustice, unfairness, or 
incapacity into the governing body, compel a resignation. 
As chairman of the association I was brought in frequent 
contact with him, his work, and its difficulties. He admin- 
istered that judicial responsibility for three years, resigning 
during the first year of his Vice-Presidency. There could 
be no more significant tribute to his unfailing judgment, 
tact, and character than the remarkable fact that there was 
never an appeal from his decisions nor complaint of their 
fairness and justice. In this demonstration is found the 
secret of his success. 

Very many in our country rise by their own exertions 
from nothing to affluence. The rapid evolutions caused by 
steam, electricity, and invention give numberless opportuni- 
ties for the farsighted and courageous to seize the hand of 
Fortune before their fellows know of her presence. These 
capable men of affairs are of two classes — the class who 
make what others lose and the class who benefit their 



Address of Mr. Depew, of New York. 27 

associates or the community or the whole country by the 
developments they promote and the enterprises they create. 
The first are the pirates of society and of business. They 
are the fathers of communism and the foster fathers of 
anarchv. The others are among the benefactors of their 
time. It was the characteristic of our friend that, possess- 
ing the farsighted faculty and having the sense and training 
to keep the curb of caution upon the promptings of acquisi- 
tiveness and imagination, he drew a large circle into his 
plans, and all shared in the profits of his undertakings. 

The founders of the Republic meant to provide for a suc- 
cessor to the President one who should be equally worthy of 
the Chief Magistracy; but the machinery they devised gave 
the Vice-President no voice in the Government and created 
an inevitable antagonism between him and the President. 
It revived in a form the old historic struggle of the able 
and ambitious heir foi recognition and influence in affairs 
of state. The contest began during our Inst Administra- 
tion. Confidence and cordiality were impossible between 
tin self-centered Washington and the imperious Adams. 
With Adams and Jefferson was the mutual repulsion of tin- 
Puritan and the Cavalier. In Jefferson and Aaron Burr the 
revolutionist wasseeking todestroy the patriot. The practi- 
cal Jackson and the philosophic Calhoun were soon at war. 
The man of action threatened to hang the theorist if he 
carried his ideas to their logical conclusions. 

With the growth of the- country, the strength ol 
and their internal dissensions, the Vice-Presidency was 
thrown to the friends of disappointed candidates and at 
disaffected States to select the nominee and Ik- appeased. 
Fillmore and Arthur discarded the friends of the dead 



28 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

President, and Tyler and Johnson reversed their polities 
and policies. The power in control at the White Honse 
and in Congress sought to minimize the Vice-President 
and make him obscure and innocuous. Happily for Mr. 
Hobart there was no conflict over candidates in the con- 
vention which nominated William McKinley. The parti- 
sans of defined policies had selected him as their best 
exponent in advance. There were no disappointed and 
vengeful interests to be reconciled. The choice settled 
upon Hobart as the most fit and available running mate 
for the Ohio statesman. 

Coming thus into this high office, his talent of common 
sense and his charm of personality made him, from the 
beginning, the friend and chosen counselor of the Presi- 
dent. He lifted the office out of the rut of conventionality 
and possibility to a position of dignity, usefulness, and 
trust. He won the warm affection of his party associates 
and the esteem and respect of his party antagonists. He 
had the faculty of the wisely busy man of always having 
plenty of time, and that he shared with his friends in that 
hearty and healthy companionship which has made his 
name a hospitable memory at the Capitol. Though he 
died in his prime, with apparently years of usefulness 
before him, yet his was a full and rich life and a nobly 
rounded career. It is fitting that such a man should fall in 
battle with his armor on. The conspicuousness of his 
departure gives luster to his example. Statesman, citizen, 
husband, father, friend, the sum of his worth among ns is 
that he performed with faithfulness and fidelity, with con- 
scientious care and magnetic ardor, all the duties of public 
and private life. 



Address of Mr. Cockrell, of Missouri. 



ADDRESS F ME URL 

Mr. President: I avail myself of the- opportunity to-dayto 
join in paying the last public tribute of respect, friendship, 
and affection to the memory of our late Vice-President, 
Garret A. Hobart. 

His busy, industrious, honorable, and successful life can 
well be held up as an exemplar to encourage, strengthen, 
and inspire the young of our great country. 

A native of New Jersey, of English and Dutch parentage, 
born June 3, [844, he graduated from Rutgers College in 
[863, at the age of 19; then taught school and began the 
study of law; admitted to the bar in 1869; city counsel of 
Pati rson in 1871; in the State legislature in 1873; reelected 
and made speaker in 1876; in the State senate in 1879, and 
in i88i elected president of that body; reelected in [882; a 
delegate at large to the Republican national conventions in 
[876 and :88o; elected a member ol the national committee 
in 1884, serving continuously until [896, when nominated 
for Vice-President; elected and became Vice-President of 
the United States and President of the Senate on March 4, 
[897, a comparative stranger personallj to man) members 
of this body. 

The office of Vice-President of the United State-, under 
our Constitution, is a peculiar one. In the proceedings of 
the Convention that framed our Constitution the office of 
Vice-President first appears in section 3 of the partial report 
of the committee of eleven, submitted September 4, 1787, 
which provided that "the Vice-President shall be ex-officio 
til "I the Senate." 



30 Life and Character of Garret A. Hoba> t. 

In its discussion Mr. (Terry said : 

We might as well put the President himself at the head of the Legis- 
lature. 

To tliis Gouverneur Morris replied: 

The Vice-President, then, will be the first heir apparent that ever loved 
his father. 

By our Constitution — 

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of 
the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives. 

The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme 
Court, and in such inferior court-, a- the Congress may from time to time 
ordain and establish. 

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States 
of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four j'ears, and, 
together with the Vice-President, chosen for the same term. 

The constitutional qualifications for President and Vice- 
President are the same — a natural-born citizen "who shall 
have attained to the age of 35 years and been fourteen 
years a resident of the United States." 

In the election of a Vice-President, "if no person have 
a majority then from the two highest numbers on the list 
the Senate shall choose the Vice-President. A quorum for 
the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the wdiole number 
of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be 
necessary to a choice." 

The only express authority given to the \ 'ice-President 
is in these words: 

The Vice-President of the United States shall he President of the Sen- 
ate, but he shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. 

In the absence of the Vice-President, or when he shall exercise the 
office of President of the United States, the Senate chooses a President 
pro tempore. 

In case of the removal of the President of the United States from 
office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers 



Address of Mr. Cockrell, of Missouri. 31 

and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, 
and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, res- 
ignation, or inability both of the President and Vice-President, declaring 
what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accord- 
ingly . until the disability be removed or a President shall he elected. 

'resident, Vice-President, and all 1 the United States 

shall 1»- removed from office on impeachment for. and convii 
treason, bribery, or other high crimes and mis lemeanors. 

X11 authority is given to fill any vacancy in the office 
id' Vice-President in any case. When the office becomes 
vacant from any cause, it so remains until another Vice- 
President is elected. As President of the Senate the Vice- 
President presides over its deliberations and trait- 

iness according to the rules and regulations made by 
the Senate and sees to their enforcement. It is at times 
a trying and delicate position. In the one hundred and 
eleven years of our constitution on March 4, 

[goo, as a nation, there have been 28 Vice-Presidential 
terms, tilled by 24 different persons. Four Vice-Presi- 
dents—John Adams, George Clinton, Daniel I). Tompkins, 
and John C. Calhoun — were each elected tor two terms, 
and Clinton and Calhoun each with two different I 'residents. 

1 >ne Vice-President — Richard M. John of elec- 

tion by the Electoral College for the term [837-1841 and 
was chosen by the Senate. 

( >ne Vice-President — John C. Calhoun — resigned on De- 
cember 28, [832. 

Three Vice-Presidents — John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, 
and Martin Van Buren — became Presidents of the United 
States to succeed the Presidents with whom they were 
respectively elected as Vice-Presidents. 

Four Vice-Presidents became Presidents by the death of 
the Presidents— John Tyler, by death of President Harrison, 



32 Life and Character of Garni A. Hobart. 

April 4, 1841; Millard Fillmore, by the death of President 
Taylor, July 9, 1S50; Andrew Johnson, by the death *A~ 
President Lincoln, April 15, 1865, and Chester A. Arthur, 
by the death of President Garfield, September 19, 1881. 

Twelve of our twenty-four Vice-Presidents were mem- 
bers of the Senate before or after they were Vice-Presidents. 
Of these twelve, eight, Aaron Burr, Martin Van Buren, 
Richard M. Johnson, John Tyler, George M. Dallas, Wil- 
liam R. King, Henry Wilson, and Thomas A. Hendricks, 
were United States Senators before they were Vice-Presi- 
dents; one, John C. Calhoun, resigned the Vice-Presidencv 
to become United States Senator; one, John C. Breckin- 
ridge, was Senator after his term as Vice-President; one, 
Hannibal Hamlin, resigned as Senator to become Vice- 
President and was afterwards Senator, and one, Andrew 
Johnson, was Senator before and after his Vice-Presidency 
and Presidencv. 

Six Vice-Presidents have died in office: George Clinton 
on April 20, 1812, Elbridge Gerry on November 23, 1S14, 
William R. King on April 18, 1853, Henry Wilson on 
November 22, 1875, Thomas A. Hendricks on November 
25, 1885, and Garret A. Hob-art on November 21, 1899. 
Two died in April and four in November. 

( )ne out of every four of our Vice-Presidents has died in 
office. This is a remarkably great mortality. (July two 
Vice-Presidents, Levi P. Morton and Adlai E. Stevenson, 
are surviving. 

During my service in the Senate we have had seven Vice- 
Presidents, with only the two survivors. 

Vice-President Hobart was one of the twelve Vice-Presi- 
dents who had never been a member of the Senate. He 



Address of Mr. Cockrell, of Missouri. y 

soon made himself familiar with the rules and methods of 
business of the Senate and proved himself to be a good par- 
liamentarian. He was quick in disposing of the business 
on hi- desk and in facilitating the procedure of business 
before the Senate. 

He was a man of decided abilities and varied and liberal 
attainments, with great firmness and decision. In discharg- 
ing his duties he was eminently fair, impartial, able, and 
prompt, and by his genial temperament and charming per- 
sonality was a most acceptable and popular President of the 
Senate. 

It is no disparagement to the twenty-three distinguished 
Vice-Presidents and Presidents of the Senate who preceded 
him to say that he had few superiors as President of the 
Senate. 

Personally he was the true gentleman — hopeful, pleasant, 
generous, and kind. 

We shall miss him in this Chamber, but while life remains 
we shall cherish the kindliest remembrance of Garret A. 
I [, ib \i:t, Mm- late President of the Senate and friend. 
S. Doc. 45'-— 3 



Life and Character of Garret A. I lobar t. 



ADDRESS OF MR. CULLOM, OF ILLINOIS. 

Mr. President: It is but natural that we should place 
our offering of affection upon the grave of our dear associate 
and friend who so recently presided over this body. It is 
fit that we shall pay tribute to the kindly and -real qualities 
of the late Vice-President in this public manner. 

We, as Senators of the United States, comprising all shades 
of public opinion, coming from all sections of our common 
country, are animated by a common desire to do honor to 
the memory of this man whom we had learned to love, and 
to place upon the perpetual record of the Senate our tribute 
to his illustrious memory. 

I feel that I but express the sentiment of every member 
of this body when I say that the few years of my acquaint- 
ance with Garrkt A. Hobart have added to my love for 
the human race, and have stimulated every fiber of my 
being to a higher conception of the worth and value of a 
man of character. The entrance of the Vice-President into 
the fellowship of this body and his association with us in 
the administration of affairs have seemed to me to be of 
great benefit to every Senator. 

Vice-President HOBART was an active man of the busi- 
ness world in which he lived. His integrity and good judg- 
ment were the bases of a reputation for ability, honor, and 
justice, which the entire people recognized. No one dis- 
trusted his sincerity. All who knew him instinctively 
relied upon his judgment. His life was stainless, and his 
whole career, active and successful as it was in every way, 



Address of Mr. Cttlloni, of Illinois. ^5 

contained nothing which, dying, he could wish to blot. 
Nothing received his approval which was not just and 
right. I do not recall a single decision made by him in 
this body which was ever reversed. 

He made no hasty rulings, nor did he indulge in careless 
opinions. Strong in convictions, and with the moral cour- 
age to express and be governed by them, he was always 
tolerant of the views of others. A keen, unerring judge of 
men, he was charitable in his judgment of them. I do not 
remember ever hearing .a word from his lips or of reading 
any expression of his which would wound the heart or 
feelings of another. Ik- was naturally and always broad- 
minded, ami his great heart was full of kindness and human 
sympathy. His loyalty to his friends reached in its inten- 
sity tlie point of genuine chivalry. He was an earnest 
speaker, an excellent and successful lawyer, and it is not 
strange that he was chosen by great interests to arbitrate 
theii differences, as has been referred to to-day. He was 
!>v nature a judge and counselor. 

.Mr. President, the great mystery of death in all the ages 
has challenged the wisdom of men for its solution, and to- 
day, aftei countless efforts in consideration of the problem, 
mankind is quite as helpless and unsettled as it was six 
tin itisand \ ears ago. 

The approach of death, vvhethei it appears in the silence 
and quiet of the peaceful home or in the midst of the thun- 
der of battle, with the attendant struggle of warfare and 
carnage, always reaches the same result — ultimate rest, the 
rest and quiet of the grave. 

The life of the busy, active public man, who has dealt 
with the affairs of his time with cue and skill and good 



36 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

judgment, finds its close just as simply and certainly as that 
of the humblest person who wrought out his own salvation 
while on the earth. And yet this life of ours is but a stage 
upon the shores of time which leads to an eternal future. 
It is lint the portal to a long home awaiting us. If the 
experiences which have accompanied us upon the earth 
have brought honor and fame and have given us comfort 
and peace in life, we may have just hope in the coming 
future. 

Vice-President Hobart, in a degree beyond that of most 
men of his time, was active and powerful in his chosen field 
of labor. He built up a reputation for simple, honest per- 
formance of duty which all of us may well emulate. I lis 
passing from life was like that of a good man who had per- 
formed his duty upon the earth. He was not ashamed to 
meet his Judge. His was a story to be commended, a life 
to Lie loved and copied. The world was better for the pres- 
ence of and the kindly life of Garret A. Hobart. 

A few months ago Vice-President Hobart was in the 
vigor of health. Disease seized upon him. He sickened 
and died. Such is the weakness of human life. Health, 
energy, power yesterday; death to-day. The great spirit 
of the great man is gone to the God who gave it. In his 
death the Senate has suffered a great loss. He was a man 
of wonderful qualities. Among these were energy, indus- 
try, judgment, courage, integrity, and great common sense. 
As the presiding officer of this body, no Senator, I am sure, 
ever felt for an instant that there was the slightest disposi- 
tion on the part of the Vice-President to do or to allow an 
injustice. 

The fact that the news of his untimely death brought to 



Address of Mr. Callow, of Illinois. 37 

each member oi this body the keen pain of personal bereave- 
ment is in itself a higher tribute than any Senator can 
express. 

His close attachment for the President was as rare as it 
was generous and beautiful. The undisturbed harmony 
between the two was creditable to each, a gratification to 
our people. Mr. Hobart was a whole-hearted patriot. He 
loved his country, its institutions, and the flag. He had no 
false pride. He was a model citizen and an equally model 
official. He was never unmindful of duty and was rarely 
absent from the chair which by the people lie had been 
called to fill. Indeed, we all know now that this sense of 
duty kept him at his post when the dictates of health 
enjoined otherwise. 

Mr. President, in these days of trial— for the) are days of 
trial— to all men charged with official duty it is well to dwell 
upon the examples of faithful, conscientious men, who strive 
to do right as God gives them to see the right. And a 
recital of the noble deeds and manly virtues of greal men 
ass away benefits the nation. The Vice-President 
II: sense of fairness made him the friend of 
opleand the people hi- friend. His love foi fm deal- 
ing and common honesty was a natural sentiment and with- 
out doubt was tlie controlling reason which caused his 
influein Light by men of affairs and his methods 

i,, be followed high in the councils of the State and nation. 
That peculiar quality of clear-sightedness in important 
matters seemed to clothe him with wisdom in his official 
station and directed him with unerring certainty. His 
utterances as the presiding officer of the Senate were clear, 
correct, and never confused. His method of accurate stale- 



38 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

ment impressed his associates with the force and strength 
of his opinions. 

I have said that in his death the Senate suffered a great 
loss. The great event which took him from our midst in 
his strong manhood was a dispensation not easily borne by 
the members of the Senate. But the life we live imposes 
burdens upon all of us. We must assume and bear our 
responsibilities in order that we may become worthy of the 
rewards of our own lives. We must make friends with 
adversity and strike hands with sorrow that we may not 
forget our obligations to humanity. We cannot determine 
that all our ways shall be cast in pleasant places, nor can 
we elect that we shall enjoy a future of peaceful quiet. But 
whatever betides us, let us bravely bear our responsibilities 
as he did, and submit, like him, without murmuring, to 
the burdens which may press upon us. Then mav the 
future bring to us, as it did to him, the acclaim, "Well 
done, good and faithful servant." 

Mr. President, we miss his genial presence, the ring of 
his cheerful voice, the warm grasp of his hand. He sleeps 
the sleep that knows no awakening, but he will live with 
us all in our memory. "Many times and oft" will we find 
ourselves looking for a face which we cannot see and 
listening for a voice which we cannot hear. But the grave 
is nut the end. We look beyond to the great fact of immor- 
tality, and we cling to the fact that we are immortal; that 
there is light and life beyond the grave, and, comforted by 
such reflections, we can say of departed friends : 

Hail and Ian-well. 



Address of Mr. Davis, of Minnesota. 39 



ADDRESS OF MR. DAVIS, OF MINNESOTA. 

Mr. President: So much has been said, and not too 
much, and said so well, concerning the character of the 
late Vice-President of the United Slates that I shall con- 
form to the strictest propriety if I limit my remarks to a 
brief statement of the impressions which that character 
produced upon me, impressions which will remain so long 
as I shall have the power to retain them. 

As he appeared to me, Mr. HOBART was a man of very 
simple character. There were 110 intricacies in his compo- 
sition; and yet the simple character has many moods and 
phases, and it will besf serve my present purpose to con- 
sider him in certain several aspects in which that chain h 1 
presented itself. As presiding office] of this body his dis- 
charge of his functions was marked by great alertness of 
perception, a perfectly clear conception of what was trans- 
piring, a simple impartiality in decision, and, abo 
Mr. President, b) an administrative ability which expe- 
dited the business of this body without precipitately hurry- 
ing it. This is 110 small commendation; ami he possessed 
in an eminent degree those qualities which made him an 
ideal presiding officer. 

Something has been said in the remarks that have pre- 
ceded mine as to his influence as a Vice-President. I d<> 
not think, Mr. President — indeed, I do not know from any- 
thing I have ever read or heard — that any predecessor of 
Mr. HOBART has evei exercised over public affairs that 
marked and persistent and beneficial influence that he did. 



40 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

There was something in the large composition of the man 
which necessarily impressed itself upon every situation, 
social, business, or political, with which he was brought 
into contact. And accordingly we all felt here, irrespective 
of party, that our deliberations were being guided by a 
serene, just, and impartial intelligence, which we now miss 
so greatly because it has gone forever. 

As a member of a great political party Mr. Hobart was 
a man of the clearest political convictions. He believed 
implicitly in the cardinal and axiomatic principles of that 
great organization, which to him were the directing forces 
toward national prosperity. He was tolerant of the opin- 
ions of others, but firm in the assertion of his own; and in 
a time of great national exigency, when the honor of this 
country was at stake, when its dignity was imperiled, and 
when its safety was not altogether assured, his influence 
was felt more than it was perceived by the senses — was 
powerfully influential in .guiding not only the councils of 
his party, but the united councils of this nation in the 
events which preceded and which continued throughout 
the recent war. 

But, Mr. President, it is always best to consider a char- 
acter like Mr. Hobart, or any character, indeed, as a man, 
because after all it is as a man that history will consider 
the best and the bravest before she gathers up his ashes 
into her everlasting urn and impresses upon it her indelible 
inscription. As I said, he was a man of great simplicity 
of personal character. He had been fortunate in life in all 
respects. If aught has ever been said against him, I never 
heard of it or saw it in print. He seems to have pursued 
the even tenor of his way among his neighbors and also in 



Address of Mr. Davis, of Minnesota. 41 

the lofty walks of public life unscathed by criticism, un- 
slandered by adverse report. What his purposes were in 
the long life which seemed to lay before him I do not know. 
Doubtless he had ambitions. He had a right to have them. 
He might well, like the dark astrologer aspiring for empire, 
have consulted the stars in their course and said: 

Is it wrong to make the fancy minister to hope, 

To fill the air with pretty toys of air. 

Ami clutch fantastic scepters moving toward me? 

But if he had such ambitions, Mr. President, they were 
noble ambitions. If he sought popularity, it was the popu- 
larity which was aspired to by Lord Mansfield— that which 
i and not that which is rim after. He- was entitled 
to conceive and cherish the loftiest ambitions. Life seemed 
to spread out all beautiful and most extended before him. 
It passed almost in an hour. 

But irrespective of an) dreams of ambition or of the 
future in any aspect which lie may have entertained, he 
had assured to him and he died in the full enjoyment 
of that which is superior to and more precious than the 
realization of any dream of that kind. In that heaven on 
earth known as home, in all of his social relations, in the 
prosperit) of his mati ri il conditions, in everything which 
goes to make up a happy and contented life, he had entitled 
himself, and had "honor, love, obedieno , nds," 

- wait for that old age in winch these 
things arc hoped for. 

But, Mr. President, he has left us. He will not return 
to us, but we shall go to him. He has penetrated the cloud. 
Hi has -one beyond the curtain. He has solved tin 
riddle which mankind for generations and generations has 



42 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

been reading in vain, and it only remains to say that the 
sacred soil of his State, which has gathered into its unre- 
turning bosom for generations from colonial times, through 
Revolutionary times, and through all the history of our 
Government the bodies of so many noble men, scholars, 
patriots, and men of affairs, holds no more sacred form than 
that of Garret A. Hobart. 



Addn i> of Mr. Morgan, of Alabama. 



ADDRESS OF MR. MORGAN, OF ALABAMA. 

Mr. President: The century which has just closed has 
enfolded in its archives the names of a large number of mag- 
nificent men, but I doubt if in its vast sweep across the ana 
of time it has recorded the history of a more perfectly 
rounded American character than that of Garret A. 
Hobart. That i-- a very great character, Mr. President. 
It had its origin centuries ago. It has been improving in 
its characteristics, its attributes, its strength, and itsperfect- 
uess during all the time since it first was known to the 
world— the charactei of an American citizen. The public 
requirements of American character have been increasing in 
their intensity from year to year and century to century, so 
that a public man who is brought in contact with the uni- 
versal obs< rvation of mankind in a great office such as Mr. 
Hobart held undergoes the close, careful inspection of all 
classes of these seventy-five or eight} millions of p 
and that observation extends even farther than our own con- 
tinent and reaches to other countries. Now, when it 
said of an American brought under this great lens of inspec- 
tion that he has stood the test in every particular, that he 
has proved himself worthy of this lofty citizenship and the 
confidence of this great people, what higher eulogy can the 
tongue of man pronounce upon him? 

Mr. Hobart appeared to me to he as nearly a perfect rep- 
ition of the manhood, of the grandeur, of the nobility 
of this American character as any man I have ever read of — 
certainly as nearlj as am man I have ever seen. In estab- 
lishing this great position for himself we find that he had 



44 Life and Character oj Garret A. Hobart. 

no adventitious aid. It has been the work of the develop- 
ment of a noble nature under institutions suited to its per- 
fection. So that in his character and in his conduct this 
Government receives honor and praises among men. 

It has been said here that we miss him from the Senate. 
We d> miss him, not because his place cannot be sup- 
plied among the great Americans who might be put in his 
position, but unfortunately in our system of government 
there is no opportunity to supply the loss, and it is a very 
serious matter, particularly to the Senate of the United 
States. Twice have I witnessed this occurrence since I have 
had a place in this body. The Government of the United 
Stairs, and particularly the Senate, loses one of its great 
balancing and determining powers on the death of the Vice- 
President. There is no opportunity to substitute him in his 
power to give a casting vote on matters of legislation or in 
confirmations to office. It sometimes happens — yes, very 
often happens in circumstances of political exigency — that 
the vote of the Vice-President of the United States is neces- 
sary to determine questions in which the people of the pres- 
ent age and of coming generations are profoundly interested. 

In this respect his office is higher in its importance than 
that of the President of the United States and is nearer to 
the people, as the legislative power, in which the Vice- 
President may participate, is higher than the veto power of 
the President. 

In his prison the people at large have their only direct 
representative in the lawmaking power of Congress, and it 
is a grand thought that their will, expressed in the vote of 
the Vice-President, decides all questions when the Senate is 
equally divided. 



Address of Mr. Morgan, of Alabama. 45 

We have lost that power out of the Senate, and while we 
can supply, and do supply from our own body, a presiding 
officer who is worthy of the situation in every possible 
respect, we cannot confer upon the presiding officer the 
power to cast a vote in case of an equal division of the 
Senate. So that in his death under the circumstances 
the Government is bereaved and the Senate has lost an im- 
mense force. It may turn out not to be unfortunate. \t 
tin- same time it is the'Striking out of a wheel or a power 
in the Government of the United States which we cannot 
supply, and in that respect I look upon the death of our 
\ ici Pn sidenl a a Meat public calamity. 

It was his honor to participate, as has been remarked 
here to-day, in some of the most eventful facts in the his- 
ton of the American Union. It has been many years, Mr. 
President, if ever, since any Vice-President from that desk 
announced the passage of a measure of greater importance 
than that which declared war against Spain. < >ut of the 
passage of that bill has come the emancipation ol 
scattered almost around the entire world, from Bourbon 
rule; from that last remnant of tyranny, which now has 
departed forever from this hemisphere, and, I may say, from 
the Pacific Ocean. That was a great opportunity to Gar- 
ret A. HOBART, and I wish he could have lived to realize, 
as he would have realized, the great blessings that will flow 
to mankind from that grand declaration. 

But it stems that it was not the will of Providence that 
this beautiful character should dwell among us longer. It 
was our good fortune that we should have the benefit of his 
counsel and his example, [f any man within my acquaint- 
ance has ever been taken away from happier circumstances 
than those which surrounded him I am unconscious of it. 



46 Life and Character of Garret A. I lobar t. 

He abounded in wealth built nji by his own hands, so that 
he really lived under his own vine and fig tree, planted with 
his own hands. He was surrounded by family ties such as 
few men in the world boast of or ever enjoy, ties that were 
the tenderest and truest that a noble woman can create 
about the heart of a true man. lie had the universal 
friendship of this grand Republic, from the greatest to the 
least, without distinction of persons and without stint. 

Upon his magnificent form sat the very beauty of health, 
power, and the glory of a splendid manhood. There was 
nothing needed by Garret Hob art, it seemed to me, to 
make his life completely happy. But he was called, as all 
men must Ik- called. It has frequently occurred to me that 
it ought to have been painful to him to separate himself 
from the good fortunes by which he was surrounded here, 
but when he was called he answered like a child called by 
its mother or father and said, "Here, Lord, am I," and he 
passed away from this life without a regret, it seems, ex- 
cept on the part of those who knew him and loved him. 

No smoother, quieter, or more gentle death has any man 
died in this land, and when we come to understand how 
and why it was, as explained by the Senator from New 
York [Air. Depew] to-day, we find that he lived and acted 
a Christian life; not professing Christianity and failing to 
observe its injunctions, but he lived a Christian life, and 
"his works do follow him." So when the summons came 
to this magnificent man he quietly laid down all of the 
splendors, all of the attractions, all of the charms of life, 
called his family about him and bade them quietly adieu, 
having made all preparations for the disposal of his body 
after death. Who would not say, "Let my last end be 
like his?" 



Address of Mr. Morgan^ of Alabama. 47 

He has left in this Chamber, Mr. President, a very sweet 
memory; one not merely honored, but a memory that is 
beloved by his associates here. I have never heard a criti- 
cism or ill-natured remark made about Garret A. HOBART 
while he was Vice-President and in the occupancy of the 
Presidency of the Senate. It is wonderful that under his 
Presidency we could pass through the scenes that we have 
here, wrought up almost to the pitch of exasperation at 
times by party conflicts and differences of opinion about 
matters of the greatest possible moment — wonderful that in 
the midst of all our excitements we were all the friends, 
the warm personal friends, of the late Vice-President of the 
United States. 

I will read a roll of the Vice-Presidents, of whom lie was 
the last: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Hun. 
George Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, Daniel I). Tompkins, 
John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, Richard M.Johnson, 
John Tyler, George M. Dallas, Millard Fillmore, William 
R. Kin-, John C. Breckinridge, Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew 
Johnson, Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson, William A. 
Wheeler, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas A. Hendricks, Levi 
1'. Morton, Adlai I-',. Stevenson, and Garret A. Hobart. 

In that ll lust ii on, roll of great statesmen, some of whom 
have impressed themselves upon the world until, we may 
well sax, their memory will last for all time, there is the 
last name, which we honor to-day, who was unpretending 
in his course of life, who appeared not to be an ambitious 
man, but who carried wisdom and justice in his bosom and 
friendship in his heart, love tor his race, his fellow-man, 
and lor his country. 

As he loved us. so we love ami revere his memory. 



48 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. CHANDLER, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Mr. President, in paying my tribute of respect and affec- 
tion to the memory of our late Vice-President, I am naturally 
reminded of his relations and those of Mrs. Hobart to the 
State of New Hampshire. As Merrimack County, during 
the closing years of the last century, was the pioneer region 
of the Granite State, where Daniel Webster first saw the 
light of day, with the smoke from no hearthstone rising 
over the frozen hills between the rude chimney of his 
father's home and the settlements on the rivers of Canada, 
so during the earlier years of the present century Coos 
County was the frontier section, close up to the Canadian 
border, narrowed almost to a point by the eager pressure of 
the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont on the west and the 
sturdy woodsmen of Maine on the east. In this county of 
Coos, in its primitive days, strong and God-fearing men and 
women pierced the damp wilderness, conquered the frosts 
and snowdrifts, tilled the rough and rockv land, and went 
on amid such surroundings to cultivate and develop the 
noblest aspirations for themselves and their descendants, for 
their State and their country. 

Born in this county of Coos from English and New York 
ancestry, Addison W. Hobart, son of Roswell Hobart, as a 
boy, moved to New Jersey and became a school-teacher, 
later a prosperous and respected merchant. From the same 
frontier countv of Coos also went to New Jersey one of her 
best sons, Socrates Tuttle, who became likewise a school- 
teacher and afterwards a lawyer of ability, eminence, and 



Address of Mr. Chandler, of New Hampshire. 49 

success. From the families of these two New Hampshire 
men, who were intimate friends in their new home, came 
Garret A. Hobart, for whom we now mourn, and his 
helpful and devoted wife, in the presence of whose sacred 
grief we she mid to-day speak with the utmost tenderness 
and sympathy. 

The Vice-President was a man of rare gifts of person, 
mind, and manners; never acting with boisterous force in 
affairs nor with tierce energy in oratory, but possessed of 
the highest native intelligence, assisted l>v the most ample 
culture and marvelously blessed with the most potent 
ability to meet the strongest men of the country in business 
negotiations, in legal contests, and in political managi 
and t<> control and influence their actions according to his 
plans and desires. He was fortunate in In 
education, and also in his college course, which ended at 
an earl) age and gave him an opportunity, like his father 
and his wife's father, to fasten his hold upon what he had 
learned ami to prepare- to make use of it with readiness and 
power through that lust of discipline, which has In I] 
form the characters and give success to the careers of so 
many of America's public nun — a period of patient service 
as a school-teacher. 

Then he Studied law, entered upon its practice, and 
became successful as a lawyer before In- interested himself 
in the political struggles of his city, county, and State. 
lie had valuable training during repeated terms of service 
in the legislature, and while presiding as the chosen 
head in each of its branches he enjoyed unusual opportu- 
nities for the complete exercise and improvement of his 
highest faculties. It was through all these experiences, 
S. Doc. 450 4 



50 Life and Character of Garret A. I lobar! . 

doing his part well in every function, whether small or 
large, that he made himself wise and cautions, able and 
strong, cultivated perfect self-control, secured the supreme 
confidence of his associates in every station, and fiuallv came 
to exhibit those traits of character which gave to him the 
supreme successes of his life, his worldly riches, and his last 
and highest public honors, those of the Vice- Presidency. 

My own personal relations with Mr. Hobart, beginning 
with political associations of main' years ago, were most 
cordial, based upon that mutual respect which is essential, 
I think, to perfect friendship; and those relations were 
without a break or a flaw at any time. I am therefore not 
willing now to coolly analyze his mental characteristics or 
to speak discriminately of his merits in private life and in 
public station. For such a purpose this date is too near 
tin.- time of his obsequies, where we saw so many of his 
countrymen coming from miles around his home, epiietly 
thronging the streets of Paterson and giving unite recogni- 
tion of the great loss that had come to them through the 
death of their most distinguished citizen. Their affection 
lor him brought them to his bier; and it is only of that 
side of his character which evoked such affection that I am 
willing to speak to-day. 

Sometimes it is possible that kind and tender-hearted 
men are too weak for the great affairs of life, private and 
public. Yet it cannot be successfully maintained as a 
general assertion that the strong men of this world have 
been unamiable in their relations either with their families 
or their fellows. In truth, the contrary, I think, is the 
ease. Those wdio have been the sweetest and gentlest of 
men in ordinary life have been also the strongest and the 



Address of Mr. Chandler, of New Hampshire. 51 
bravest when great and worthy exigencies have called 
upon them for courageous action. It must not be said 
only of the warriors that — 

The bravest arc the tenderest— 
The loving arc the daring. 

It may be also said of these in civic station that some of 
the noblest and most heroic deeds of history have been 
performed by the quietest and most affectionate of men. 

At all events, he whose career we now eulogize never 
was called weak or undecided when strength and decision 
were needed. He had sufficient will power and could 
Strenuously exert himself whenever the occasion required 
him to do so. Does anyone doubt that in any possible 
emergency of life that we can conceive of in which he 
might have been called to act firmness and strength of 
character would have been shown sufficient to stamp him 
a i on< of the strongest of men? 

Bui how gentle was his nature to all around him. His 
joyous looks, his smiles of humor, his words of greeting 
commendation, anil advice made him the most p] 

tirades, the truest, sweetest, and dearest of friends. 
No efforl is needed at this moment on the part of any one 
of us who has served with him in this Chamber to see 
him, in the mind's eye, courteously and graciously pre- 
siding over the Senate, heeding the rights of all, giving 
to everyone his due, offending no one, and drawing to 
himself a respect and affection from all his companions 
which will never lade as long as his memory lingers in 
their minds and hearts. 

The thoughts of our departed friend should always be 
accompanied by a vivid faith that he is immortal, is even 



52 Life ami Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

now with all his heart and sonl serving the Creator of 

his being in a world more wonderful, more glorious and 

happier than this in which we are left behind. Such 

faith in a future state cannot be driven from the minds 

of men. That it is given to us to see in this life, even 

with limited vision, the countless stars of heaven, each 

one the center of a solar system like that which we call 

our own, whose vastness appalls the mind with its visible 

immensity; that we are allowed to perceive the wonders 

of the earth ami ocean, what God has created and, what 

man has wrought; that we are permitted to know and 

feel the reality of the existence of the souls of men and 

each one the existence of his own soul; and yet that at the 

end of a short stage of being on this planet we are doomed 

in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the mere 

body dies, to be annihilated, to be known no more by 

others, to become ourselves forever unconscious — nobody 

believes in such a cruel fate for all mankind. Everyone 

has hope and faith in immortality. The change is to be 

a solemn one, but who would prefer annihilation? 

Nor are we in the life to come to be merely disembodied 

spirits. Such a transition is not conceivable. We are to 

possess material bodies, not the same we now have, less 

earthy, more spiritual, than those, we trust, but still 

material bodies, exploring the great physical orbs about 

us, learning what they are, beginning to comprehend the 

mysteries of their vastness. Then also shall we meet those 

who have gone before us. 

When the mists have risen above us, 

As tile Father knows his own; 
Face to face with those who love ns, 

We shall know- as we are known. 



Address of Mr. Chandler, of New Hampshire. ^ 

We may clasp hands with the .Master; and — who can 
tell? — possibly in some far-off time, yet after a period short 
compared with the full measure of our immortal existence, 
we may be permitted humbly to look upon the great white 
throne and Him who sits thereon. Without a doubt I 
believe that our friend whom we have lost here now lives — 
me soul that we knew and loved — but endowed with 
a new body and a glorified spirit, inhabiting some one of 
the stars which nightly shine upon us, impress us with a 
deep conviction of our immortality, and subdue us into awe 
and reverence foi the great Creator of the universe. 

Tlu- city of our God 

Hi! \\ idc. 

And through her streel 

Shall pour a living tide. 

n i more night shall be, 
I .ah shall reign 
hall bi no mon 

No part in 



Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. LODGE, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

Mr. President: The death of Mr. Hobart was both a 
loss to the country and a deep personal sorrow to his 
friends, of whom no man ever had more. Of the qualities 
of mind and heart which make it possible to say this with- 
out going beyond the limits of simple truth, there is much 
to be said. But there was one conspicuous public sen-ice 
rendered by Mr. Hobart which I think has not been 
understood, and certainly has not been adequately appreci- 
ated. He restored the Vice-Presidency to its proper posi- 
tion and lifted it up before the people to the dignity and 
importance which it merits. The decline of the Yiee- 
Presidency in political weight and popular estimation has 
been an unfortunate development of the last fifty years. 
In our regard for that office and in our treatment of it we 
have departed utterly from the wise conception of the 
founders of our Government. The framers of the Consti- 
tution intended that the Vice-President should be, in all 
respects, in ability, in reputation, in weight of character, 
and in his standing before the people, on a plane of abso- 
lute equality with the President. We have but to turn to 
the original clause of the Constitution, amended so long 
ago that it is well-nigh forgotten, and there find the proof 
of this statement. 

In that clause it was provided that the electors in each 
.State should vote for two persons from different States 
without naming the office voted for, and that the man 
receiving the highest vote in all the electoral colleges 
should he President and the one receiving the next high- 



Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 55 

est should be Vice-President. In other words, the electors 
were to vote for two men who were equally fit to be Presi- 
dent, and one was to have the first and the other the sec- 
ond place. This system led to the tie between Jefferson 
and Burr in 1801, the dangerous intrigue in the House to 
supplant the former by the latter, and the consequent 
amendment of the Constitution compelling the electors to 
indicate the office voted for. The amendment was un- 
doubtedly necessary, but it does not touch in any way the 
original conception of the makers of the Constitution, nor 
should it ever have been allowed to affect it. 

According to that conception, the Vice-President, placed 
011 equal level in choice, was to be a man not only fit to 
i to ill,/ Presidency in case of death or disability, 
bul was marked out by his position as the natural succes- 
sor when the four or the eight years' term of his as 

spired. In this way Adams succeeded Washington 
and Jefferson succeeded Adams. Then, again, after a long 
il, Van Buren went from the Vice-Presidency to the 
White House. Since that time the conception of the fram- 
ers has faded and grown dim. The Vice-Presidency has 
been treated t< ften b) part}- conventions either as a con- 
venient and honorable shelf upon which an eminent man 
might quietly close his career, or as .1 consolation prize to 
be awarded to the faction in the party which had failed to 
wm tlie highest place. In the fust case the country ran the 
risk of having a Vice-President incapable, from age or per- 
haps other causes, ..f carrying the responsibilities of the 
Presidencj if they were forced upon him ; and in tin 
they had a Vice-President who lived in strained and distant 
relations with the White House, ami if suddenly called to 



56 Life and Character of Garret . i. Hobart. 

occupy it brought a change of men and of measures when 
the people had voted for policies and executors of policies 
wild should be continuous in action for four years. 

So far has this misconception and this false treatment of 
the Vice- Presidency gone that it is almost universally looked 
upon as certain political extinction for any man with a 
career before him, still more with hopes of the Presidenev, 
to accept the second place in the Government, to which he 
is chosen by the votes of the entire American people. Such 
ideas and such a practice are bad for the Government, com- 
plete perversions of the intentions of the framers, and breed 
conditions which are potentially dangerous. Out of this 
neglect and misconception Mr. Hobart silently lifted his 
great office merely by the manner in which he filled it and 
performed its duties. Quietly, firmly, and with perfect tact 
he asserted the dignity of his high position, never going too 
far and always far enough. Without knowing exactly win-, 
people suddenly came to realize that there was a Vice- 
President of the United States, that he held the second 
position in the Government, and that, with the exception 
of the President, he was the only man in the country holding 
office by the vote of the entire people. In the same way the 
old and true conception of the Vice-Presidency in relation 
to tlie administration reappeared. Instead of holding aloof 
or remaining indifferent to the conduct of the Government, 
Mr. Hobart regarded himself as a part of the Administration 
and as a representative of the policies which that Adminis- 
tration had been chosen to carry into effect — as one of the 
President's friends, advisers, and supporters, equally inter- 
ested with him in the success of the measures to which they 
were alike committed. 



Address of Mr. Lodge, oj Massachusetts. 57 

As presiding officer of the Senate lie fulfilled carefully and 
thoroughly every duty of the place. He abandoned once fi >r 
all the bad habit which had grown up of submitting nearly 
every question of order to the Senate, and ruled promptly 
and well on all these points, as every presiding officer ought 
to do. In these ways he steadily elevated the Vice- Presi- 
dency in the estimation of the people, and made the office 
what the framers of the Constitution intended it to be. 

When he came to Washington he was but little known 
to the people of the United States outside his native State 
of New Jersey. When he died the whole country grieved, 
not because the Vice-President was dead, hut 1 
GARRET HOBART was gone, who had, in a time only too 
brief, impressed himself upon them as a worthy holder 
of a great office and as a distinguished public man. 

It may be that we shall drift back into the old and false 
idea which has grown up ibout the Vice-Presidency. It 
maybe that again it will be treated as an office for some- 
one about to retire from public life, as a consolation prize 
to a defeated faction; but should this happen, 1 cannot 
believe that it will last, and there will certainly he no 
excuse tor it now, because Mr. Hobart demonstrated 
plainly to all men the real greatness and importance 

md has shown that it ought to he one of the great 

of political life, to he desired by our most ambitious 

men. and regarded not only for its intrinsic importance, hut 

as a stepping-stone to higher honors. That a man in two 

ould 'hi this is the strongest evidence of an unusual 

character and of abilities of 110 common order. 

I have dwelt at length upon this point because it has 
seemed to me that it showed in a very marked wa\ what 



58 Life and Character of Garret . 1. Hobart. 

manner of man Mr. Hobart was. There is, however, 
much more to be said. I did not have the good fortune to 
know Mr. Hobart until he came to the Vice-Presidency, 
but during his service here I came to know him well and 
to regard him as a most valued friend, and to hope that he 
had given his friendship to me. He had an unusual capac- 
ity for winning affection. No one, I think, could be closely 
associated with him without becoming sincerely attached to 
him. His invariable good temper, his cheerful disposition, 
his sense of humor, his love of fun, all made him a most 
attractive companion, but beneath these agreeable attri- 
butes were much stronger qualities. 

In the trying days which preceded the Spanish war, 
when the country was moving surely toward the last resort 
of nations, and when doubts and hesitations were apparent 
in many directions, Mr. Hobart revealed himself to me as 
a man of strong sense and with a clearness of vision which 
showed him to be a statesman. When perplexing questions 
were upon him, lie showed in a marked degree that highest 
of qualities, veracity of mind. He was never muddled with 
words, entangled witli phrases, or lost in the mist of fine 
sentiments. He never mistook words for things. He saw 
facts exaetlv as they were and dealt with them accordingly. 
He knew that in the conduct of the Government, and 
especially in times of war, it was sometimes necessary for 
the public good to disregard individual feelings. However 
unpleasant such a duty might be, he would not shrink from 
it, and he never hesitated to tell a needed truth if it was for 
the benefit of the country, although his tact was such that 
personal enmity never followed. 

I trust and believe that when the history of the momen- 



Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 59 

tons times in which he rendered his greatest public sen-ices 
comes to be written he will receive the very high meed ol 
praise which he deserves. Those who knew him and saw 
him in that eventful period know well what he did and 
appreciate at their right value the courage, loyalty, and 
ability which he displayed. We mourn him as a friend, as 
an eminent and patriotic public servant, faithful to his 
country in all relations of life. His death while he was 
still in his prime was a grievous loss, not only to those who 
loved him, but to the country which he loved and which he 
served so well. 



Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. CAFFERY, OF LOUISIANA. 

Mr. President: I did not learn of the date of the 
eulogies on Vice-President Hobart in time to prepare any 
elaborate statement upon his life and character. I will 
limit myself to a brief but sincere tribute of affection and 
esteem to his memory. I will touch upon his character 
<>nlv as it was exhibited here. I had not that personal 
acquaintance with the Vice-President which would warrant 
me in any extended remarks upon his inner life. 

But, Mr. President, there are abundant opportunities to 
discover what material a man is made of when he is placed 
in th.e position that Vice-President Hobart was. He was 
in daily contact with the members of this body; he had to 
pass upon questions of great moment; and however much 
his position would seem to screen him from that scrutiny 
into character which the ordinary man affords, yet there 
was abundant and ample opportunity to know and to judge 
of his great merits. 

Mr. President, as a presiding officer of this body Vice- 
President Hobart could be truthfully said to be an ideal 
one. His judgments were characterized by clearness and 
comprehension, and by a trait which is rarely possessed — of 
absolute impartiality. He was a partisan, as all adherents 
to great political parties are; but in the discharge of his 
duties as President of this body he was absolutely impartial. 
It mattered not what the question was, it mattered not 
whether there was an opportunity to catch the nearest way 
for political advantage, in every ruling of his it was at 



Address of Mr, Caffery, of Louisiana. 61 

once perceived that lie was animated solely by the honorable 
and high purpose to discharge the functions of his great 
office as befitted the Vice-President of the whole United 
States and not as the adherent or partisan of any party. 
The smoke of the battle between adherents and the shout- 
ings of tin. captains never ascended to the chair which he 
occupied. There all was calm and serene; justice and 
impartiality presided there. 

Now, Mr. President, with the limited scope of my obser- 
vation, I can truthfully say that no more kindly or courteous 
man ever presided over any deliberative assembly in these 
United States. His kindliness of disposition, his courteous- 
ness of demeanor, impressed everyone that came in contact 
with him. There was no show ; there was no pretense ; but 
there wa> the simple performance of duty by an American 
elevated to his high position. And, Mr. President, it is one 
of his highest praises that he was of the noblest ami purest 
type of American manhood, American virtue, American 
patriotism, American justice, and American impartiality in 
the discharge of the functions of his great office. 

This simple tribute of mine, Mr. President, is sinc( re. I 
speak with absolute sincerity in all tin- remarks that I have 
made about the deceased Vice-President. 1 know that his 
character and his qualities have been portrayed before the 
Senate to-dav in language too eloquent for me to attempt to 
rival or to equal. I know that the) have uttered the living 
truth. I know that no word of praise that has fallen from 
the lips of those who have eulogized the deceased Yiee- 
Presidenl has been said beyond the truth. 1 know that all 
the Senators who have addressed us to-day upon the life of 
oui departed President have been animated solely l>v a desire 



62 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

to pav that tribute of respect and admiration which we' all, 
as American Senators, feel to the memory of the late Vice- 
President. 

The old Latin maxim, De mortuis nil nisi bonnm, is 
surely inapplicable to Vice-President Hobart. His armor 
of character is so perfect as not to be penetrable by the 
tongue of detraction, however keen, nor by the pen of crit- 
icism, however hostile. Armed with this character of truth 
and honor, kindliness and courtesy, impartiality and justice, 
detraction and criticism are alike baffled to find a flaw in the 
admirable type of manhood which he exhibited. 



Address of Mr. Allen, of Nebraska. 



[] ALLEN, OF NEBRASKA. 

Mr. PRESIDENT: Occasions like this rob me of what 
little power of speech nature has given me; and yet I 
feel that I would not be doing my full duty, occupying 
the peculiar political attitude I do in this Chamber, if I 
should now fail to say a word commemorative of the life 
and virtues of our deceased Vice-President. 

My acquaintance with Mr. Hobart began, of course, 
March j, 1897. It ended March 4, 1899, having extended 
through the three memorable sessions of the Fifty-fifth 
Congress. 1 had heard of him before his nomination to 
the Vice- Presidency. 1 had known of him as one citizen 
would know of a distinguished citi/en living in a distant 
part of the nation. But I had never met him, and 1 knew 
of him more particularly as a prominent Republican in 
high favor with his party on the Atlantic seaboard. 

There was nothing in common between the late Vice- 
lent and myself politically; we were antipodal, lie 
was a most pronounced Republican; 1 an equally pro- 
nounced Populist, lie believed in the doctrines of his party; 
I did not and do not. He did not believe in the doctrines 
of my party. And yet, Mr. President, on this solemn 
:■ it affords me a mournful pleasure to In- able 
to testily to the high personal worth and character of 
this distinguished citizen. There was much in the char- 
acter of Garret A. Hobart that was lovable. He was a 



64 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

sincere and truthful man. He was an intelligent and 
honest man, always actuated by the highest and purest of 
motives. 

It is sometimes said that men are not entitled to any 
particular mention or credit for discharging their duties. I 
do not believe in that saying. In these days and in this 
generation, where greed is pushing for power and sometimes 
abusing it, to find one of pronounced political proclivities 
and opinions who can withstand the appeals and the cajolery 
of his party and discharge his duty fully and well in the 
face of public sentiment is so rare as to recpiire recognition 
and notice. 

( If course my acquaintance with the distinguished deceased 
was not such as to permit me to speak at length of his virtues. 
And yet, Mr. President, it is not necessary to have known 
a man throughout his entire career to enable one to form 
something of an estimate of his character and his character- 
istics. The late Vice-President was a typical American. 
There was nothing of snobbishness in his character. What- 
ever he was was upon the surface ; it was noticeable by all 
men. He was a product not only of the soil in which he 
sleeps, but he was a product of American institutions, and 
was thoroughly American in all his habits, thoughts, in- 
stincts, and purposes. 

I feel, Mr. President, something of a personal loss in the 
death of Mr. Hobart. When he, on the 4th of March, 
[897, stood at the desk you now occupy and I listened to 
his address to this Chamber and to the country, there came 
over me a thought that possibly this man intends to revo- 
lutionize the rules and violate the traditions of the .Senate 
that had stood unchallenged for over a hundred years. I 



Address of Mr. Allen, of Nebraska. 65 

now recognize that possibly I was oversuspicious and some- 
what hypercritical at the time. As time wore on and r 
becarnemorefamiliarwith this distinguished citizen I learned 
his main- virtues and high character. I found him to be a 
man of supreme courage at all times and under all circum- 
stances, dealing justly with all Senatorsand with all having 
business before this great bodv. 

I would say, Mr. President, my estimate of Air. HobarT 
is that he possessed in a rare degree those qualities which 
would make a judicial officer. His temperament was judi- 
cial. While he was rapid and accurate in the transaction 
of business, he was always just and considerate of the rights 
and welfare of others, 

Mr. President, on more than oik occasion this friend of 
our-, showed me acts of kindness that it would be impossible 
for me to forget; and throughout the years, whether they 
1|( -' few or man) , that may be allotted to me on earth 1 shall 
look hack to the Fifty-fifth Congress with kindlj recollec- 
tions of this distinguished man, who has been untimely 
taken from his family and his country. 

Death, Mr. President, is a peculiai thing. Men are born 



to die 


, and tl 


ley 


die 


to live 


■ ags 


in. 


I ai 


n of 


that 


1111 


inker 


who 1 


.el lew 


in t! 


le 


immorl 


alit) 




■ the 1 


mniai 


1 SOI 


li ai 


id in 


the m 


idving 1 


aith 


of 


the CI 


iristi 


an. 


1 Ml! 


frien 




not 


lead. 


He ha 


s simpl 


5 1" 


sse 


d thro 


ugh 


a ti 


ansitii 


111 st 


ate 


thai 


will 


enabli 


■ him t< 


» liv 


:■ il 


1 glon 


and 


1111 


mortal 


ity. 


To 


his 


w i fe 


and to 


his eh 


ild 


gO< 


■s out 


the 1 


ill! 


eignei 


1 sympatl 


ly 


:' the 


peoph 


■ of till 


S 11. 


ttio 




irdle; 


3S i 


if stal 


.ion, 


l"cga 


idle 


ss of 


politic 


al alig 


nme 


1::. 


Hi-, 


memon 


is sacred 


to a 


11. 


And 


the sai 


Idest 0] 


' all 


is 


that he 


was 




lied be 


:fore ] 


11st 


ime 


from 


the sec 


S. Doc. 


life; 

1 




thcac! 
"5 


tive < 


lul 


ies inc 


unibe 


111 !1 




him. 



66 Life and Character of Garret A. Ilobart. 

Mr. President, it would be useless for me to say more. 
It" I were to write the epitaph of this distinguished man, I 
would chisel upon the shaft that stands above his mortal 
remains the words: "Here lies an honest man, the noblest 
work i if God." 



Address oj Mr, k\an, of New Je 



ADDRESS OF MR NEW JERSEY 

Mr. President: The State of New Jersey mourns with 
the Union of all the States in the untimely death of her 
distinguished son, Garret A. Hobart. Great as the loss 
has been to the nation, the blow has fallen with heavier 
force and with the sense of a personal and intimate loss 
upon the people of the city and State among whom his 
busy and useful life has been spent. He was born in the 
State of Mew Jersey. His youth and early manhood, his 
college da\ ■>, and the ripening seasons of his lif 
passed amid the familiar scenes and the friendh faces of his 
native home, and at the last, when the inevitable summons 
came, he died in the citj which mourned him as its most 
illustrious citizen and in the State to which he brought so 
much honor and distinction. If the State gave him birth 
and > ducation, training and experience, home and success, 
he, too, was generous to New Jersey, for he brought new 
honors to the old Commonwealth, he reflected new glon 
upon its career, alread\ bright with the achievements of 
the distinguished patriots who had preceded him, and he 
returned with thousandfold interest the bounty of his gen- 
irent. 

His was a life of usefulness. All his abilities centered 
about that pivot of action and conduct. He believed that 
the only aristocracy and the true aristocracy was the aris- 
tocracj of useful men and useful women. lie lived loyalh 
by that principle through all his days. He exemplified it 
in his boyh 1 anion- the farms of Monmouth Countv. It 



68 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

was the principle which guided him through his under- 
graduate days at Rutgers College. It animated his early 
life as a law student and as a follower of the law. It was 

the magic wand which brought him the gifts of success in 
all his undertakings, in his private and domestic life, in 
his business and political career, ami, finally, in the lofty 
sphere of public activity to which at the call of the people 
he was summoned. He had not only the desire to be use- 
ful, hut he knew how to be useful. There was no waste of 
effort either in his intention or in the application of it. He 
was not led aside into bypaths. He followed the direct 
road to usefulness by the shortest route. Thus he accom- 
plished great deeds of usefulness for his city, his State, and 
his country-. It was the legacy he most desired to leave to 
his fellow-citizens. 

Loyalty was no less a striking feature of his character. 
He came of a loyal, patriotic ancestry, and the influence 
of that heritage was manifest in all the phases of his busy, 
useful life. He was loyal to his home, to his city, to his 
State, and to his country. He was loyal to the great prin- 
ciples of liberty upon which the fathers founded this 
Government. From his early youth he was led to believe 
in the wisdom, the justice, and the patriotism of the 
Republican party. He never swerved in his loyalty to 
that belief, and all the activities of his energetic political 
career were devoted to the maintenance and the strengthen- 
ing of that party and its principles. He was loyal to his 
friends because he believed friendship to be a sacred 
association. He was loyal to his country because he 
believed that within the United States T.od in His wisdom 
had established the highest and noblest form of govern- 



Address <>/ Mr. Kean, of New Jersey. 69 

ment yet given to man. He served his country, his fellow- 
man, and liis God with a loyalty that marked him as a man 
apart. 

From his young manhood he had taken a deep interest 
in public affairs. With him this inclination seemed to be 
the outcome of a special genius for public and political 
life. He might, indeed, have spent all his days in the 
public service from the day when fresh from his law- 
studies lie was summoned to political office in his own cit\ 
and county. The ability witli which these earlier tasks 
were discharged made clear the path before him when it 
was desirable in the interests of his constituency that he 
should represent his county in the State legislature. In 
the legislative halls of his own State he rapidly made an 
enviable reputation as a faithful legislator, a wise public 
servant, and a man whose integrity and honesty of purpose 
an ever questioned. He was barely over 30 when he 
was chosen speaker of the assembly. A lew years later he 
became president of the senate. Iu both these positions he 
displayed the same grasp of parliamentary practice, the 
same dispatch of public business which were so strongly 
revealed in his can er as presiding officer of this body. 

Gradually, step b) step, he increased his sphere of activ- 
ity and influence. IK' became a power in the politics of 
his own State. lie became a factor ill the politics of the 
nation. For years he represented the State of Newjersej 
on the national Republican committee, and during all this 
time he worked with unceasing energy tor the success ol 
the party and its candidates wherever the) might he. His 
political acumen became traditional. His judgment on 
political matters was regarded as unerring. His loyalt) 



■jo Life ami Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

was a constant inspiration. His zeal accomplished results 
where others failed. Not a few of the successes of the 
Republican party in New Jersey and elsewhere were due to 
the remarkable combination of qualities and activities 
found in Garret A. Hobart. 

Popularity came to him as naturally as if it were an 
endowment of his birth. He made friends as easily as he 
kept them. To meet him was to come under the influence 
of a gentle, lovable, sunny, affectionate nature such as few 
men have the fortune to possess. Strong as he was in his 
beliefs, courageous as he was in his convictions, and un- 
yielding in his sense of right and honor, it seemed impos- 
sible for him to make an enemy. He dwelt in an atmos- 
phere which drew men toward him. Add to this a mental 
equipment of the highest order, and the secret of his success 
in winning success is disclosed. 

The people of his own State knew him and loved him long 
before his great and good qualities as a man and as a states- 
man became known to all men. New Jersey had tried him 
through a long period of years. In everything he had been 
called upon to do for his State or for his people he had 
i lone more than the full measure of his duty. He had 
always surpassed even the fond expectations of those who 
expected the most of him. He had endeared himself, as 
few sous of New Jersey have ever done, to all the people of 
his State, and when the national convention of Republican 
delegates summoned Garret A. Hobart to be a standard 
bearer with William McKinley, New Jersey felt that at last 
her honored son had come into the legacy that was his and 
her due. 

How the Vice-President bore himself since that day in 



Address of Mr. Kraii. oj New Jersey. 71 

July, 1896, when lie was called upon to be a candidate for 
the second highest office in the gift of the people it is not 
my province to attempt to describe. I am here to-day to 
testify to the love that New Jersey bore for her distinguished 
and lamented son — -one. alas, too early to his long rest; 
to testify to the honor and distinction that Vice-President 
Hobart conferred upon the State, which mingles tears 
over his untimely departure with pride for his illustrious 
career. Well might New Jersey and the nation engrave 
this epitaph over his grave: 



in hearts we leave behind 
die. 



Proceedings in the House. 

DECEMBER 4. [899. 

The Rev. Henry X. Couden, Chaplain of the last House, 
offered the following | 

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, in whom all our 
longings, hopes, and aspirations are centered, both as indi- 
viduals and as a nation, humbly and most reverently we 
bow before Thee, knowing full well that without Thee we 
can do nothing; but with Thee we are capabje 

iplishment of great things, and thus fulfill our indi- 
vidual destin} and make, to greatei perfection, the genius 
1 if Mm 1 Government. 

We bless Thee for that providence which has upheld, 
sustained, and guided us through all the vicissitudes of the 
past, tor the prosperity which now smiles upon us, for the 
intelligence, moral excellency, and religious attainments 
of our people, and for that prestige which under Tin prov- 
idence has made us strong and influential throughout the 
world. We pray Thee that the onward march of progress 
may not be impeded by the new conditions which perforce 
une upon us. 

Make, we beseech Thee, for wisdom and righteousness 
our statesmen, that all tin- difficult and intricate problems 
which shall arise may be justly, wisely, and amicabh 
adjusted. 



74 Proceedings in the House. 

To this end we most fervently pray for the President of 
these United States and all of his official advisers, that in 
the affairs of State he may be guided by the light of heaven. 

Hear us when we commend to Thy special care the Con- 
gress now convened. Before it is an open page; and at its 
close we pray Thee that it may be writ with history which 
the American people may be proud to look upon and which 
shall meet Thy approbation. We pray that Thy Holy 
Spirit may come mightily upon the Speaker and upon all 
the members on this floor. 

Since last we met many members who otherwise would 
be here have been removed by death. We lift up our hearts 
in behalf of their friends and their loved ones. 

It would seem a great calamity that has been visited upon 
us in the death of our Vice-President. But Thou art God, 
and doetll all things well. May his character, unsullied, 
and his great example in private and in public life be an 
inspiration to us all, and may Thy loving arms be about 
his bereaved wife and child. 

These things we ask in the spirit of our Lord, Christ, our 
Saviour. Amen. 



ANNOUNCEMENT OF DEATH. 

Mr. Gardner, of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, to me has 
fallen the melancholy duty of announcing to the House 
that Garret A. Hobart, Vice- President of the United 
States, departed this life, at his home in Paterson, N. J., on 
the 21st day of November, 1899. 

The marked administration of the high office which he 
held, the second in the gift of the Republic, his brilliant 



I'riiLtiih'ugs in the House. 75 

and useful career, his sympathetic touch with every class, 
the unsullied purity of his public and private life, had so 
impressed the country that his death occasioned expression 
of deep-felt grief so universal as to manifest a general and 
profound sense of national bereavement. 

Congress will doubtless, by concurrent action of the two 
Houses, at an early moment set apart a time for proper 
expression touching the life, character, and services of this 
eminent citizen. 

I move you, sir, that this House, out of respect for his 
memory, do now adjourn. 

'flu- Speaker. The gentleman from New Jersey moves, 
out of respect to the memor -1! tin late Vice-President of 
the United States, that the House il.> now adjourn. 

The motion was agreed to. 

Accordingly (at ^ o'clock and (.9 minutes p. m. 1 the 
Hous< adjourned. 

J.\\r \ky 8, [90 >. 

Mr. GARDNER, of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, 1 ask 
unanimous consent that Friday, the 26th day of January, 
from tin how of 2 o'clock, be set apart as the time 
fitting tribute to the memor; of the late lamented Vice- 
President of the I 'lilted States, GARRET A. HOBART. 

There was no objection, and it was so ordered. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 

January 26, igoo. 

The Speaker pro tempore. The gentleman from New 
Jersey [Mr. Gardner] offers the resolutions which the Clerk 
will report. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

Resolved, That the House lias received with profound sorrow the intel- 
ligence of the death of Garret A. HobarT, late Vice-President of the 
United States. 

Resolved, That the business of the House be suspended in order that 
the public services and private virtues of the deceased ma\ be appropri- 
ately commemorated. 

Resolved, That the Clerk of the House be directed to communicate 
these resolutions to the Senate. 

/6 



Address oj Mr. Stewart, of New Jersey. 



EW JERSEY. 

Mr. Speaker: I will occupy the attention of the House 
but a very few minutes. 

Vice-President Hobart is .lead. The nation was pro- 
foundly startled at the sad announcement. When we last 
saw him he was apparently in robust and vigorous health; 
but the black-robed messenger of death beckoned from the 
hilltops, and lie followed with the dying to an eternal rest. 
I knew him well. I attended his marriage to one of the 
most delightful young women in our community. Now 
she is his sorrow-laden widow, cloistered in -loom and 
loneliness. 

His administration was unique, and the unusual friend- 
ship existing between the dead Vice-President ami our dis- 
tinguished President was of the tenderest kind, and gave 
him personally and officially a dignity and importance 
fore lacking, and raised the office of Vice-President 
from one of ; faculty to an exalted power. In 

early life he gave emphatic promise of future wealth and 
greatness. 

( Kir (U-i'.ls do follow us from afar; 

And what we have been makes us what we are. 

He possessed greater business capacity and executive 

ability than any man I ever knew. He loved wealth and 

power, and dispensed both liberally. As the great port 

says : 

The time of tin- is short; 

To spend it basely were too long. 



78 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

His neighbors and friends best know how his shortened 
time of life was spent. Midas-like, everything he touched 
turned to gold, and his genial, robust, and cheerful appear- 
ance loaded him down with preferment and power. Hut 
it is not to the dead our words should be alone or particu- 
larly addressed, but to the widowed wife and son who must 
carry this burden of sorrow throughout a lifetime. To this 
bereaved widow and stricken boy let our hearts go out with 
tenderness, sympathy, and love, and appeal to the Almighty, 
who is especially the widows' God, to strengthen her in 
her loneliness for all struggles to come; and when she 
approaches the eternal throne, may she bid a fond adieu to 
this world t<> embrace her beloved husband in the life 
everlasting. 

In this life there is a continual parting — by deatn, mar- 
riage, absence ; all are profoundly sad; hut death is saddest, 
for it is for life. How pathetic does our own great poet 
sing of this sad truth: 

\11 are scattered now and fled, 
Some are married, some are dead; 
And when I ask, with throbs of pain — 
"Ah! when shall they all meet again, 
As in the days long since gone by?" 
The ancient timepiece made reply; 
" Forever- never; 
Never forever." 

Never here, forever there. 

Where all parting, pain, and care. 

And death, and time shall disappear, 

Forever there, 1ml never here, 

The horologe of eternity 

Sayeth this incessantly, 

" Forever — never; 
Never— forever." 



Address <>/ Mr. Stewart, oj New Jersey. 79 

Soon as age greets us we have more friends in eternity 
than here; and when we are required to depart, death's 
journey is made easier by this thought. God grant we 
may all view life as a very transient state, and always 
regard the star of eternity as soon to surround us in its 
effulgent rays 



fcto Life and Character oj Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. PAYNE, OF NEW YORK. 

Mr. Speaker, my acquaintance with Garret A. Hobart 
began on the day lie was nominated to the office of Vice- 
President at St. Louis. His quiet, cordial, winsome greet- 
ing when I first met him lingered in my memory long after 
an acquaintance had ripened into a lasting friendship. I 
desire to add my testimony to those noble qualities of head 
and heart that characterized our late Vice-President. 

In our system of government the Vice-President occupies 
an anomalous and ofttimes uncomfortable position. His is 
an office of high rank, carrying with it the greatest possi- 
bilities of political heirship and yet bringing little power 
hi responsibility. He is the presiding officer of the Senate, 
and is chosen for that august body and not by them. He 
has the right to vote only in case of a tie; he rarely has an 
opportunity to exercise this right while he presides over 
the deliberations of the Senate. In exercising the preroga- 
tives of a presiding officer he can never be a potent factor, 
but is always the servant of the Senate. 

It is to be regretted that in our political system more 
important duties and greater responsibility could not have 
been imposed upon an office of such high rank. The 
duties of the office should have been in keeping with its 
great possibilities. In case of a vacancy he is the constitu- 
tional successor of the highest officer in our system. < )nlv 
a single life stands between him and the Presidency. While 
he is clothed with the high rank and dignity of presiding 
over one coordinate branch of Congress, he is shorn of 



Address of Mr. Payne, of Nexv York. Si 

responsibility and power. He has no place in the Cabinet 
councils of the Executive. He cannot raise his voice in 
debate in the Senate; he cannot vote on the questions, 
great or small, that come before that body, unless the Sen- 
ators happen to be equally divided. He has no influence 
there or elsewhere, except that which comes from his own 
personality; scarcely more than he would exercise as a 
private citizen. Often his position is scarcely more enviable 
than that of the heir apparent to a European throne. 

In the early days of the Republic great care was taken in 
the selection of candidates for this office. The fact that 
this officer was the constitutional successor to the Presi- 
dency whenever a vacancy happened seemed to he the all- 
pervading influence in the naming of the Vice-President. 
Down to [804 the Constitution distinctly recognized this 
principle. The electors voted for two persons. The one 
receiving the greatest number was chosen President, ami 
lie who received the second greatest was chosen Vice- 
President. Under this provision John Adams and Thomas 
Jefferson were each chosen Vice-President, and each suc- 
ceeded, by election to the Presidential office, the President 
with whom they had previously been chosen as Vice-Presi- 
dent. In like manner at a later period Martin Van Buren 
also succeeded the President under whom he had served as 
Vice-President. This method of selection was changed b\ 
the amendment of [804, owing to an unfortunate complica- 
tion which arose under the old system. But the reason still 
existed why a candidate for the Vice- Presidency should lie 
in all respects equal to the emergency should he succeed to 
the Presidency. 

e the change in the constitutional method of selec- 
S. Doc. 450 6 



82 Life and Character of Garret .1. Hobart. 

tion less care has been taken, as a general rule, in the 
selection of the Vice-President. Frequently the question 
of fitness has been sacrificed to that of availability. After 
hot and bitter strife within the party the Vice- Presidency 
has sometimes been thrown as a matter of consolation to 
appease a disappointed and defeated faction. The Presi- 
dent always represents the predominant thought and prin- 
ciples of his party; his possible successor should be chosen 
for the same reason. He ought not to be the exponent of 
the tendencies of the minority. His selection ought not to 
be the result of a desire simply to gain more votes for the 
ticket. 

Garret A. Hobart did much to restore the office to its 
old-time dignity and rank. No one who knew him well 
doubted his fitness and ability to fill with honor to himself 
and to the lasting glory of his country the place of its Chief 
Executive. He had the ability, the tact, the statesmanship 
to take a high place in the long line of illustrious men who 
have served their country in the greatest office in all the 
world. 

Mr. Hobart, not officially, but b\ the force of his char- 
acter, was a part of the Administration. His counsels were 
listened to in the executive chamber, and his voice was 
heeded in legislative halls. May his successor be of the 
same high character and intellectual endowment, amply 
qualified for all the emergencies which the Constitution has 
imposed upon the office. 

Garret A. Hobart exemplified the typical life of a suc- 
cessful American boy. He worked his way through college 
and won the right to practice in the courts of his State by 
dint of hard work and on the meager pay as a teacher in the 



Address of Mr. Payne, of Nc?x York. 83 

public schools. The school teacher became a lawyer at the 
age of 25, and this was the beginning of his success, culmi- 
nating in the Vice-Presidency at the age of 53. While 
engaged in an active and exacting profession he found time 
to enter into the councils of his party and perform all the 
duties of an American citizen. Courage, common sense, 
ability, and persevering work brought success in every 
sphere of his usefulness. Responsibilities multiplied upon 
him, but, like every busy man, he found time for all. 

No interest intrusted to his care was ever neglected. His 
fellow-citizens honored him and he honored them in the 
faithful and conspicuous discharge of private and official 
duties. lie was successively presiding officer of each branch 
of the legislature of his own State. His advice was eagerly 
sought b) clients and party managers. And with all the 
burden of responsibility he found time for his social duties, 
his family, and his church. He passed away in the ripe 
maturity of hi- powers, seemingly in the daj of his greatest 
possibilities and power, yet it was the close of a life abound- 
ing in influence and full of honorable achievements. 

As presiding officer of the Senate, he has had few equals 
and no superior. He seldom left the chair during the ses- 
sion of the Senate, was always fully informed as to the 
progress of business, never shirked the responsibility of a 
decision, was ever courteous, tactful, and ready, and with 
all just and honest. lie was respected by political friend 
and foe alike. 

In these few words, Mr. Speaker, I have sought, as it 
were, to place a single flower on the grave of Garret A. 
HOBART. His life work, how worthily and well done, the 
whole nation bears witness. His days were full of useful- 



84 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

ness and crowned with honor. His last victory was his 
best; it was the victory of the Christian's faith. As he 
calmly bade his family farewell, and with courage turned 
to meet the great destroyer, it was with the calm confidence 
in a new life, unnumbered by the years. His death was 
the crowning triumph of his successful life. Verily, "His 
works do follow him." 



Address of Mr. Dalzell, of Pennsylvania. 85 



A-DDRESS OF MR. DALZELL, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

Mr. Speaker: Since I have been a member of this House 
I have very seldom taken any part in such exercises as 
engage our attention to-day. I have never felt that it was 
my duty to speak when speech would necessarily be onlj 
perfunctory. I have felt that the language of eulogj is too 
often the language of extravagance, and that this is the 
more apt to be so when it is the result of a seeming regard 
for the demands of propriety than when it is an answer to 
the promptings of an appreciative regard. Propriety sug- 
gests that we should put upon record our estimate of the 
nation's loss sustained in the death of the Vice-President; 
hut if that were all that appealed to me to-day I should 
remain silent and leave toothers the duty of formulating 
that estimate. 

1 come to bring my humble tribute to tin- mem 

1 t A. Hobart because of my personal esteem for 
him, because of mj admiration of his career, and becau ■ 1 
believe him to have been a high type of American man- 
hood, illustrating in his life the splendid possibilities of 
American citizenship. 

As ma) he said of many Americans — perhaps of the most 
who are successful —he was the architect of his own fortune. 
And yet we are not prepared to say of all who thus achieve 
success that their Lives command our admiration. It is the 
im aus bv which the success is attained that challenges a 
place in our regard. 



86 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

Mr. HoBAET had sterling qualities of character — industry; 
the love of work that brings experience; the wisdom that 
turns that experience to account in the seizure and improve- 
ment of opportunities; the desire to excel that, faithfully 
pursued, insures excellence; the integrity and strength of 
character, the fixedness of purpose, and the healthy ambi- 
tion that sooner or later bring distinction to their possessor 
and make him a marked man among his fellows. 

He was a successful man in every sphere that he entered, 
and the story of his life has to do with main- and varied 
spheres. He realized success not because of mere accident 
of fortune or of opportunity, but by reason, above all, of 
the possession of those faculties and traits of character that 
appeal to the confidence of men. He attained eminence as 
a business man. He accumulated wealth and shared it 
with others. His was the guiding mind in large projects 
and enterprises whose success meant not only individual 
.but the general weal. He was a public-spirited man. As 
his means grew so he grew in mind and character. He- 
shared his good fortune with others. His hand was open 
as his heart was warm. 

He had the conception of a broad-minded man as to his 
duties and responsibilities. He was one of those who 
conscientiously assume the burdens and face the duties of 
citizenship. He knew that good government is an indi- 
vidual affair; that there can be no honest mass unless there 
be honest particles. And so he gave of his time and of his 
means to the choice of good men to office. It was regard- 
less of selfish purposes that he took place himself at the 
call of his fellows; for with him private interest yielded to 
public, and public office was a public trust. 



Address of Mr. Dalzell, of Pennsylvania. 87 

As the years went by the sphere of his usefulness and of 
his influence grew. He became a leading man in his city, 
in his neighborhood, in his State, and at last in the nation. 

He was the law adviser of his city. lit- was more than 
once a member of his State legislature, and its speaker. He 
was for six years a member of his State senate, and its pres- 
ident. He was the nominee of his party for a seat in the 
United State Senate. He was Vice-President of the United 
States. Iii all these varioi of trust he so bore 

himself that few could criticise, no one blame, and all must 
praise. 

IK was a recognized power in his church. He was 
knt and beneficent, exercising an influence for good 
among high and low. rich and poor, t<> the remotest places 
to which that influence reached. And how main those 
places were only those can tell to whom his departure came 
with a sense of personal loss. 

It is not lor us to penetrate the sacred precincts and 
attempt to measure the void made there where he was 
loved and loving husband and father, counselor, and bosom 
friend. 

Mr. Hobart's was a well-rounded character. He was a 
well-poised man; evenly developed on all sides, remarkably 
free from faults, and well equipped with the everyday vir- 
tues that count tor so much in making life happy for those 
around us. 

Hut it is the crowning glory of Mr. HOBART'S lite and 
thai which makes secure his place in history that during his 
incumbency of the Vice-Presidencj of the United States he 
restored to that office its old-time dignity and honor. He 
gave to this generation a conception of that office which for 



88 Life and Character of (.arret A. Hobart. 

many previous generations had faded from the minds of 
men. 

The framers of the Constitution intended that the qualifi- 
cations for President and for Vice-President should be 
identical. Inasmuch as upon the death of the President the 
Vice-President succeeds him, no reason appeared to their 
minds why the candidates for these offices should not in all 
respects be equals, and so the Constitution provided that 
the electors should vote for two persons, and that the one 
having the highest number of votes should be President 
and the next in number the Vice-President. So John 
Adams was chosen as the first Vice-President, and subse- 
quently Thomas Jefferson as the second Vice-President, and 
both were chosen as Presidents upon the expiration of their 
respective terms. Since their day only one single man has 
been chosen President of the United States who had pre- 
viously served as Vice-President, and that was Martin Van 
Buren. And yet we have learned in four cases — those of 
Tyler, Fillmore, Johnson, and Arthur, who each succeeded 
to the Presidency on the death of the President — how 
essential it is that the Vice-President should be as well 
equipped for the first office as is the man chosen for the 
first office himself. 

The alarm occasioned by the rivalry between Jefferson 
and Aaron Burr in the election of 1S00, when Burr almost 
succeeded to the Presidency, moved our fathers to amend 
the Constitution and to provide for the selection of a Presi- 
dent as such and a Vice-President as such. At the time of 
this change in our system there were not wanting those 
who, measured by subsequent events, have been proven to 
be true prophets. In the debate in the House in 1803 upon 



Address of Mr. Dalzell, of Pennsylvania. 89 

the proposed amendment to the Constitution Mr. Ro^er 
Griswold said : 

The President i- elected for four years. He may die within that period, 
he may be removed from office, or lit- may become disqualified to perform 
its duties. In either of these events the Vice-President succeed-, to the 
power Under the existing arrangement you will secure, as far as human 
prudence can accomplish it. the most eminent men for these tu 

mdidate must be voted for as President, and if the electors fairly 
execute the Constitution they will give their votes for those men 
the best qualified to administer the Government. Tims under every prob- 
1 •-.! vim will find "lie of the most eminent of your citizens at the 
head "i ; our Government. 

But if the amendtni nl prevails, the case must he greatly changed. The 
man voted for as Vice-President will In- selected without ;m\ decisive view 
to his qualifications to administer the Government. The office will gen- 
erally be carried into the market to In i oi some 
ii hi which will lie regarded 
n ill be the temporary 111- 
mdidates over the electors of his State. It is in this man- 
must expect to obtain .1 man to fill the second office in the Gov- 
ernment ami who must succeed to tin ] hi every 

■ noted by 
: ingements, but the permanent mien intr) are 

In how many national conventions have we seen the 
realizations of these forebodings! In how mam conven- 
tions have we seen men chosen as Vice-Presidential candi- 
dates without am controlling regard to their fitness for the 
office of President, but simply because of expediency and 
availability for ulterioi purposes! The consequence has 
been a lowering of the dignity of the second office in the 
nment in the minds and estimate of the people, and 
equent diminution of the power and dignity pertain- 
ing to the office itself. And while- our Vice-Presidents, as 
a rule, have been distinguished men, they have acquiesced 
in the popular estimate, and have sought no widei 
or broader duties than pertain to the Presidency of the 

Senate. 



go Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

To this rule Mr. Hobart was a conspicuous exception. 
He brought to the administration of his office a lofty con- 
ception of the place and a feeling of personal interest in 
and sympathy with legislation. His strong personality per- 
vaded the Senate Chamber. His clear convictions, his 
earnestness, his patriotism, made themselves felt upon his 
associates. He was not a looker-on, but an actor, an efficient 
instrument in the administration of governmental affairs. 
Unlike his predecessors, he did not stand apart from respon- 
sibility. He had the confidence of the President; he par- 
ticipated in the councils of the Cabinet; he helped to shape 
and mold policies and direct events. He kept abreast of 
the times and had Providence so decreed he could at any 
moment have taken up the task had the President been 
compelled to lay it down. 

It was his fortune to live in stirring times, to participate 
in grave events. He belonged to an Administration that 
will mark a new epoch in American history and shape for 
good or ill our future destiny. Of that Administration he- 
was a part. Toward the shaping of that destiny he con- 
tributed his share of counsel and control. He magnified 
his office. He taught the people to estimate it as he esti- 
mated it. He taught us all a lesson that I doubt not will 
bring results in our future history. He restored the Vice- 
Presidency to the place in our system that it held in the 
system of the fathers. 

And so when death claimed him all the people mourned 
his loss. They said of him as we say of him: Pie was a 
good man, a good citizen, a loyal friend, our great Vice- 
President. 



Address oj Mr. Brosws, of Pennsylvania. 



ADDRESS OF MR. BROSIUS, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
Mr. Speaker — 

Sir Launcelot, there thou Lyest; thou were never matched by none 
earthly knight's hands; thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever 
a horse; thou were the kindest man that ever struck with a sword.— 
La Morted' Arthur. 

The Arabs had a saying that death is a camel that kneels 
at every man's door. This expresses how common an event 
it is in the providential order, as common and familiar as 
birth; yet of all natural events it produces the most profound 
and lasting impression upon the mind. This is true even 
when it comes to the humble and undistinguished; much 
more so when it overtakes those eminent persons who have 
achieved honor and distinction in the public service and 
positions of great elevation in the public eye and in 
general esteem. 

The death of the gifted and great has always been and 
will ever be a solemn, impressive, and imposing circum- 
Its value in the way of example, admonition, and 
instruction is in proportion to the elevation from which the 
subject falls to his natural end. It comes to the surviving 
like a faithful schoolmaster with the open book of a closed 
life m\A assigns tin- lesson which we must study or lose its 
teaching. The lame of the great and noble dead is among 
the most enduring and valuable of our public possessions, 
and the contemplation of their example and their virtues 
exerts a salutary and ennobling influence upon the living. 

It is one of the ver\ best of men—and there is no higher 
praise — that we contemplate to-day. It is the universal 



92 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

estimation, the consensus of opinion among those who 
knew him, that the late Vice-President, in the essential 
elements of a well-organized being and the necessary excel- 
lencies of a character of the very first rank, had few, if any, 
superiors. The high success he achieved, the eminence he 
attained, the perfect character he formed, were not due to 
any adventitious aids. Neither birth nor rank nor fortune 
smoothed his upward way to the elear-aired heights he 
reached and kept. True, he had the good fortune to be 
born in a country one of whose glories is that its social 
formation is not in horizontal strata common in the Old 
World, through which few ever pass from below upward, 
but is mobile as the sea, where the lowest drop, winged 
with merit, may rise and glitter on the highest wave that 
mils. All else was due to principles, qualities, and forces 
which summed up a strong, interesting, and attractive 
personality. 

If the limits of the occasion permitted, we could easih 
name the traits which were chief agencies in the develop- 
ment of his splendid manhood. Honor, sympathy, cour- 
age, and duty were the precious and conspicuous jewels in 
the crown of his superb character, and we may set them 
apart to-day and lift them over his new-made grave as the 
golden texts in the lesson of his life. 

.Someone has said he had an unusual capacity for win- 
ning affection. This was due to his deep human sympathy. 
lie was not deficient in imagination and could place himself 
in the position of others and realize their distresses and 
their needs. His kindness to every human creature was 
proverbial. He was happy in promoting the comfort of 
those who served him. In his business career, which was a 



Address of Mr. Brosius, of Pennsylvania. 03 

conspicuous success, his example if followed would cure 
two maladies said to afflict our time — the envious hatred ot 
him who suffers want and the selfish forgetfulness of him 
who lives in affluence. This problem can he solved by 
sympathy, love, and good will. 

There is no sunshine like that of kindness to open tln.se 
beautiful flowers, sympathy, love, hope, and trust, which 
ought to bloom over the garden walls which separate the 
rich and the poor. Mr. HoBART was thoroughly imbued 
with that beautiful sentiment which holds the human 
family in the bonds of unity and love, that we are children 
of the same Father, traveling toward the same home, and 
hoping to sit down at last at the same banquet, and there- 
fore we should "love one another." 

S'> many k"'1s. so main creeds, 

mj ways so hard to find, 
When all this wicked world needs 
Is just the art of being kind. 

< Mir distinguished friend lias been twin- enobled. Death 
and di:t\ enoble all men. Devotion to duty was one of his 
characteristic traits. Her command to him a "Thussaith 
the Lord." lb- was unremitting in his attention to his 
public engagements. His entire lif< exemplified the truth 
that the path of duty is the upward way; that — 

Not once or in ice in our fair Ian 

The path of duty was | : 

Our souls should bow before the temple that enshrines 

the divinity of duty. These superb characters are the 

fruit of earth, and their surviving countrymen may 

well cherish the fine vintage of their example for their 

tual refreshment. 

The Vice-President, whom we monm, was stricken in 



94 Life and Character of Carre/ A. Hobart. 

the midst of his usefulness from the highest public place 
save one in the gift of the people, a position which, despite 
its elevation, he honored more than it could honor him. 
The character and relative eminence of the office of Vice- 
President has been the subject of diverse comment for a 
hundred years, many people regarding it as quite subordi- 
nate in consequence and rank. The original constitutional 
mode of selecting the President and Vice-President denoted 
the estimation in which the framers of the Constitution 
held the Vice-Presidential office, and yet some of them and 
their contemporaries spoke slightingly of that office. John 
Adams said: 

My country has in its wisdom contrived for us the most insignificant 
office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination con- 
ceived. 

Thomas Jefferson said: 

It is the only office in the world about which I am unable to decide 
whether I had rather have it or not have it. 

Whatever rank may have been assigned to it at different 
periods of our history, it is the glory of its last incumbent 
that he restored the Vice- Presidency to its true rank, 
redeemed it from any obscurity into which it may have- 
fallen, rescued it from the insignificance in which it came 
tn be regarded by some, and established its title to the 
dignity and elevation appropriate to the second office in the 
gift of the American people. 

It is thus seen what a beautiful and instructive career has 
closed on earth. He did not live man's appointed time. 
The mysterious clock to which Dr. Holmes so beautifully 
refers, which the angel of life wound up to run three score 
years and ten, ran down before the lapse of the allotted 



Address of Mr. Brosius, of Pennsylvania. 95 

time. But the bounds which are fixed to the duration of 
life do not always measure its worth. His career, though 
cut off in the midst of its usefulness, has been a sweet and 
wholesome example in right living, high thinking, and 
unselfish service in private and public walks of life, and his 
fragrant memory will ever remain an inspiration to those 
ived him living and mourn him dead. 
There is a tradition that among the Seneca Indians a 
singularly beautiful belief prevailed that when a loved one 
died, if they caught a singing bird and, binding it with 
messages of low and affection, released it over the grave 
■ >f the departed, it would not fold its wings nor close its 
e\es until it reached the spirit land and delivered the mes- 
sages to the loved and lost. So may the friends who mourn 
to-day bind with messages of love the birds that are singing 
in their hearts songs of homage and affection, and, releas. 
ing them at tin- grave of the departed, may enjoy tin 
of believing that they will not fold their wings until they 
reach the spirit land and deliver the messages to the loved 
and lost. 



96 Life and Character of Garret .1. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. RICHARDSON, OF TENNESSEE. 

Mr. Speaker: I did not have the good fortune to enjoy 
a long and intimate acquaintance with the illustrious man 
whose memory and deeds we honor here to-day. Death is 
a theme not lightly to be mentioned by those who are 
subject to its power; for the young may die, the old must 
die, and the wisest of us know not how soon. In the prime 
of years, in the full strength of manhood apparently, and 
with short notice, Vice-President II< )BART was called hence. 
As already stated, my acquaintance with him being limited, 
I shall not attempt to speak at length in respect lo his 
private character and inner life. I leave these remarks to be 
made by those who knew him longer and more intimately. 
We learn that he was born in New Jersey in 1844; that he 
spent all the years of his busy life in that State; that in 
early manhood he followed the profession of school-teacher, 
and later became a lawyer. 

The first public office he held was that of attorney for the 
city of Paterson, where he resided, in 1871. That later he 
was counsel of the board of freeholders of his county; that 
he was several times chosen a member of the legislature of 
his State, serving in both branches thereof, and filling the 
jDresiding officer's chair in each body. ( )nce when his party 
was in the minority in the legislature .he was voted for as 
its nominee for the United States Senate. In 1896, at St. 
Louis, he was nominated for Vice-President, and was dulv 



Address of Mr. Richardson^ of Tennessee. 97 

elected in November of that year. The same month three 
years later he died. 

During the comparatively brief time I have had the 
honor to occupy a seat in the House of Representatives I 
have witnessed the death of two incumbents of the Vice- 
President's chair. The first was that of the highly favored 
son of Indiana, Hon. Thomas A. Hendricks. He died in 
November, 1885. While Vice-President Hobart had not 
figured or participated in the public affairs of the nation at 
large so extensively as had Mr. Hendricks, yet in the nar- 
rower field of his State politics he was idolized to the same 
passionate extent. As there was nothing in the gift of 

the people of Indiana too g 1 for Mr. Hendricks, so the 

people of New Jersey felt that Mr. Hobart richly des< rved 
their warmest affection and most exalted honors. 

In my personal experience in public life I have met but 
few men mure easily approached and more civil and courte- 
ous in intercourse than was the late Vice-President. I 
recall well the first time I met him, shortly after he entered 
upon his duties as presiding officer of the Senate. The 
circumstances of our meeting made it necessary foi me to 
speak to him without the formality of an introduction. I 
was immediately impressed with his mild manner, his dig- 
nified .mil pleasing address and polite attention. Gifted as 
he was in these respects, it is not singular or strange th.it 
lie was personally popular and was held in such affectionate 
regard by those who knew him best. 

He was blessed with a large estate, which he had amassed 

by an active lite ami successful business methods ami 

management. He was enabled thereb) to entertain, and 

lie dispensed liis hospitality iii an almost lavish manner. 

S. Doc. L-; 7 



98 Life and ( Invader of Carrel A. Hobart. 

This lie did not for the mere sake of entertaining, but 
because of his generous and purely hospitable nature and 
the disposition to give good cheer and contribute to the 
comfort, happiness, and pleasure of those around him. He 
was, nevertheless, a man of duty, and rarely failed of suc- 
cess in any undertaking. This was because of his s^reat 
energy, unflagging industry, good judgment, earnest con- 
victions, and sound common sense. As the presiding officer 
ot the United States Senate he was unusually successful 
and popular. By mam' members of that body he was pro- 
nounced a model presiding officer. 

It can be truly said of him that in all the circumstances 
and conditions of life in which he was placed he bore him- 
self well, and did no act to provoke the unfriendly criti- 
cisms of partisan opponents or to mortify a friend. I had 
the honor to attend his funeral services at his home, and I 
shall never forget the impressiveness of the scene there. It 
seemed that every man, woman, and child in his home city 
and, indeed, for miles around came to do him honor and pay 
a tribute of respect to his memory. There was scarcely 
standing room in Paterson that daw and all were moved 
with pity and sorrow, the highest evidence of sincere and 
genuine affection for their honored dead. Though ill for 
main- mouths, we learn he bore his illness with fortitude 
ami quiet resignation. He never lost his heart or became 
impatient. He knew his end was approaching, but he con- 
templated the fact with that sublime confidence which 
belongs only to those who rely upon a past life marked by 
purity of conduct, integrity of action, Christian piety, and 
religious convictions. The Vice-President is dead, but his 
example in public and in private life is left to us all as a 



Address of Mr. Richardson^ of Tennessee. 99 

priceless heritage. As I close this brief tribute the poet's 
description of how a man should live comes to my mind, 
for I believe he so lived : 

So live that when thy summons comes. 

Thou canst take thy place with patriarchs, prophets, and the blest, 

p from every land to people in hea' 
And when that mighty caravan which halts one night time 
In the vale of death shall strike its white tents for the morning inarch, 
Thou shalt mount onward to the eternal hills, 

nwearv and thy strength renewed. 
Like the strong eagle for his upward flight. 



Life tun/ Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. PARKER, OF NEW JERSEY. 

Mr. Speaker: Garret A. Hobart was born June 3, 
1844, and died November 21, 1899, at the age of 55 years. 
During this comparatively short life he did well his part as 
husband and lather, as counselor and friend to high and 
low, at the bar, in the legislature of his native State, in the 
conduct of great business enterprises, as a leader in politics, 
and finally as President of the Senate and Vice-President. 

His death brought tributes of love, grief, and honor from 
a nation. The words of the great men in the Senate as to 
their young President read as if they had lost a Xestor. 
The speech of a Senator who hail been at the head of a 
great railroad recalls that Mr. HOBART had been the arbi- 
trator of traffic 1 iet ween the railroad systems of the whole 
country. He says: 

No judge ever held office by so precarious a tenure or had to decide more 
important matters. Then- can lie no more significant tribute to his unfail- 
ing judgment, tact, and character than the remarkable fact that there was 
never an appeal from his decisions or complaint of their fairness or justice. 

The Senator from Massachusetts tells us that in two short 
years "he restored the Vice-Presidency to its proper posi- 
tion, and lifted it up before the people to the dignity and 
importance which it merits;" that he lifted it out of neglect 
and misconception, and made himself part of the Admin- 
istration as one of the President's friends, advisers, and 
supporters. 



Address of Mr. Parke-, of New Jersey. 101 

Other Senators say: 

" His close attachment for the President was as rare as it was generous 

and beautiful." 

" The Vice-President loved justice. His sense of fairness made him the 
friend of the people and the people his friend." 

" He appeared not ti i be an ambitious man. but carried wisdom and justice 
in his bosom, and friendship in his heart; love for his fellow-man and for 
his country." 

"As he loved us. so we love and revere his memory." 

A close friend, who knew and loved him, lias said that 
it was a peculiarity of Mr. Hoeart that he never made a 
mistake ; that he seemed to know intuitively wdiat to do, 
and when lie once made a friend he never made the mistake 
i if losing that friend. 

( rovei noi Roosevelt says : 

With great titular rank he was not supposed to nave any active share in 
formulating the policy of the Government and helping carry it through. 
What he did was done, not by force of position, but bj force of character, 
his rare tact, his , xtraordinarj common sense, .and the impression of sin- 
cerity he created upon every man with whom he was brought in contact 

These and like sentiments, said here and elsewhere, are 
noi common utterances, nor made by ordinary men. They 
speak the love and admiration which our friend's character 
inspired in all who knew him, and tell us the fact that he 
was not one of a class of great men, but that his work and 
character were unique. His was a rare union of qualities not 
ordinarily found in one- man. He was active, but calm; 
earnest and judicious; wise, simple, and modest; witty, but 
never in derision; kind and gentle, yet courageous; a parti- 
san, but absolutely fair; a skillful politician, yet entirely true; 

severely honest, but never puritanical; sweet as a g I 

woman and strong as a true man and loved with the affec- 
tion that we give to each. 

One cannot paint the rainbow, nor will words depict the 



102 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

blending qualities which make up an arched and rounded 
character and which shade into each other so imperceptibly 
that even in looking at the man it can not be seen where 
one ends and the other begins. His sun is set and the 
rainbow is gone forever. We cannot portray it to those 
who have not seen it, but we remember its presence as a 
joyfnl memory, bringing the world nearer to the sky. He 
was perhaps most remarkable in that he was always at his 
best, never failing in instinctive and instant perception as to 
what should be said or done and what should be left unsaid 
or not done. His business energy was wonderful. His 
letters were always answered and his table clear, and his 
friends wondered when it was accomplished. He always 
had the time to see a friend, even when the stress of nations 
brought perplexity to the wisest. 

Those who were with him at St. Louis know how calm 
he was before his nomination. He had felt the pulse of the 
political situation so distinctly that he calmly expected his 
nomination, and said so. Yet when it came he was for a 
while as if overwhelmed. He realized instantly the change 
in his life, the greatness of his new duties and of the place 
that he had to fill, the stand which must be taken, and the 
responsibility that was upon him. He shrank from public 
welcomes and retired to the counsels of his own heart. 
And when he spoke a single sentence of his brief letter of 
acceptance rang through the country like a trumpet as he 
manfully proclaimed his belief that a dollar could not be 
made of "fifty-three cents' worth of silver plus a legisla- 
tive fiat." 

Such a sentence tells of his character more than any de- 
scription. His simplicity of thought, his "veracity of mind" 



Address of Mr. Parker, 0/ New Jersey. 103 

(as the Senator from Massachusetts terms it), his lightning 
and enlightening perception of facts, his simple statement 
of the issue, his power to put volumes of financial argument 
into a phrase, and, above all, his political truth and cour- 
age — all these appear written in that sentence as if in the 
handwriting on the wall. Those who then lived with him 
know what resolution it took to put and keep that sentence 
in his letter, how main of the wisest wished to disguise the 
issue, and what influences he had to meet and conquer, in 
it is seen, too, his political insight, then, as always, instinc- 
tive and unerring. From that moment the nation knew him 
as a leader. 

He was horn to he such, tor he always dealt with realities 
and with great issues, and not with little one-. II. 
what had to he done. lie decided instantly, when others 

reasoned or doubted, and was never en tan- lei 1 with word- or 
phrases. 

kike all great leaders, he also knew men, and loved them 
as nun, and recognized the best that was in them. He was 
informed not only by wide experience, hut by a universal 
sympathy with other-, that enabled him to know tin 
and heart of the nation. 

'fin- offii 1 sident, cat rying with it in 

duty except to preside in the Senate, and no power except 
that of the casting vote in case of , ( tie, gave to him 
tunity to bring all branches of the Government closer to- 
gether. In the century of national life the Senate has 
grown from 26 to 90 and the House from <>s t<> over 350, 
while the details and departments of the work of the Execu- 
tive and of tin- court- have grown until this great Govern- 
ment, in its various branches, is lunik 



104 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

the offspring of the simple assemblage of gentlemen who 
first met under the Constitution. 

Naturally these branches have grown apart. It was Mr. 
HOBART's work to bring each nearer to the other and to the 
nation. By his loving friendship with the President, by 
the relations which he maintained with men of all parties 
in the Senate, by his close affiliation with the House and 
with the leaders of national politics, he was enabled to bring 
each in touch with the other. All consulted him and wished 
to know his opinion. All trusted him. Senate and House, 
the Executive, the Army and Navy, the judges and the 
diplomats, were drawn closer together and felt how much 
he made for mutual confidence and peace. 

If dispute threatened a deadlock, his advice was sought 
by men of the most various opinions. His decisions were 
accepted because he was known to be always true and fair. 
"He had a perfect genius for friendship." His influence 
in the Senate was almost unbounded, and yet he never 
infringed the privileges of that body. His advice was all 
the more powerful because it was always sought and never 
obtruded. It will never be known how much the leaders 
relied upon him in the crises that preceded the appeal to 
arms or how much they recognized his conservatism, cour- 
age, and Americanism. 

Blessed are the peacemakers. But it takes rare wisdom 
to be a peacemaker — rare tact and disinterestedness. 

When he fell ill, a shock came to us all, a sense of national 
calamity. His life had crept into that of the nation! We 
felt how much we might have to miss him in the reconstruc- 
tion that follows after war; how much he could do, and how 
much he could prevent. The nation watched at his bed- 
side, and finally wept by his grave. 



Address of Mr. Parker, of New Jersey. 105 

The President himself has written his touching epitaph: 

In him the nation has lost one of its most illustrious citizens and one of its 
most faithful servants. His participation in the business life and the law- 
making body of his native State was marked by unswerving fidelity and 
by a high order of talents and attainments, and his too brief career as Vice- 
President of the United States and President of the Senate exhibited the 
loftiest qualities of upright and sagacious statesmanship. In the world of 
affairs lie had few equal-, among his contemporaries. His private character 
was gentle and noble. He will long he mourned by his friends as a man 
of singular purity and attractiveness, whose sweetness of disposition won 
all hearts, while his elevated purposes, his unbending integrity, and whole- 
hearted devotion to the public good deserved and acquired universal 
respect and esteem. 

As an American and from his own State. "I will instruct 
my sorrows to be proud." He is one who served his country 
faithfully. He died for that country as truly as any soldier 
in battle, welcoming the work thai killed and meeting 
death without fear as a patriot, statesman, and Christian 
gentleman, the Nation's servant and the People's friend, 
leaving a memory that is unstained and that best of monu- 
ments, the universal affection of the People for whom he 
worked. 



io6 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. D0LL1VER, OF IOWA. 

Mr. Speaker: It is not certain that the death of any man 
ought to be spoken of as untimely, because the world in 
which we live is without meaning or significance of any 
noble kind if we forget that our times are in the Hand which 
is upon all things. Yet the death of such a man as Garret 
A. HOBART seems to the feeble insight which is granted to 
us amid the perplexities and mysteries of human affairs like 
the squandering of an estate or the loss of a priceless treasure. 

He died in the midst of his labors and his honors, at the 
very moment of his largest usefulness in the world. The 
career of such a man is not an accident, it illustrates not 
only the opportunities of American life, but the benevolent 
working of the laws under which the progress of society is 
made sure. There is a doctrine grown to influence in these 
days which impeaches the whole framework of society, 
because it imposes upon all a struggle for existence in which 
onlv the fit survive. In order to put an end to such a 
tragedv, the world is filled with dreams of impossible con- 
ditions, in which all shall share alike in the rewards of life. 
According to the teachings of this school of thought, all 
who win success under the present condition of things are 
reckoned enemies of those who fail ; and there are men who, 
in their eagerness to do away with the battlefields of life, 
are ready to set mankind on a dead level, in which there 
shall be neither failure nor success, but a perfect calm, in 
which all may enjoy the luxury of a common repose. 

It is a sign of unhealthy times when the social and polit- 



Address oj Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa. 107 

ical philosophy of a race like ours becomes infected with 
these morbid opinions, for they not only pull down the 
fabric of society which has been slowly builded through the 
ages, but make any worthy and progressive human institu- 
tion impracticable. 

A Senator of the United States, famous in the world of 
business and politics, in paying tribute to Mr. HOBART'S 
memory, found an illustration of the probity of his character 
in the success of his work as arbitrator of the Joint Traffic 
Association. The orator said that every one of the thirty- 
seven railway managers concerned had come up from the 
ranks and had won his way by his own ability. And no 
one could listen to his words without perceiving in them 
not only a tribute to Garret A. Hobart, but a justifica- 
tion of the law of labor, under which the victories of life 
belong to those who win them. 

While the world is larger than it was when GARRET A. 
Hobart was born, the fear is just as groundless as it was 
then that the sons of the rich are to drive the sons of the 
poor out of the race of life. The poor boy is the only boy 
that has am chance in the world or ever did have. This 
world will always be governed l>v the intellectual and 
moral strength then- is in it, and neither the one nor the 
other will ever be possible except under the discipline of 
hardship and necessity. The hope of mankind to-daj lies 
not in the palaces of luxun and wealth, but in the 1 1 
of the people, about humble family altars, in obscure places 
where the storms of all skies beat and where the rugged 
fiber of manhood is made, which is a victor over circum- 
stances, a master of opportunities, a crowned athlete in the 
games of fortune and achievement. 



10S Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

The ancestors of Mr. Hobart were pioneers in the woods 
of New Hampshire, so far as the favor of nature is con- 
cerned probably the most backward of that marvelous group 
of communities called New England, which not only nur- 
tured the intellectual life of America, but has sent forth 
her children to lay the foundations of new commonwealths 
and bequeathed to them the imperishable riches of the old 
homestead. 

It may be counted fortunate for Mr. Hobart that he did 
not enter upon the responsibilities of life without an ade- 
quate preparation. It may be true, as Thomas Carlyle has 
said, that "your true university is the collection of books," 
and that men may obtain knowledge without the advan- 
tages of other education, but the number of self-educated 
men who have reached great eminence, without the patient 
training of the schools, is not sufficiently large to mislead 
the vouth of our day. The estimate which General Garfield 
once gave of the influence of the small colleges of the coun- 
trv compared with the great seats of learning is justified 
by a thousand illustrations, and by none more completely 
than by the case of the late Vice-President. At Rutgers 
College, a struggling institution within easy reach of his 
home, in an atmosphere free from every contagion, sur- 
rounded by teachers who entered into the personal life of 
the student and kindled within him that love of learning 
which cannot be communicated without the touch of sym- 
pathy, he found the exact environment adapted to his case. 

The fabulous endowments now steadily flowing to the 
centers of American culture, new and old, are not to be 
despised, but the youth of America ought to be warned 
against the temptation, never absent in the circumstances 



Address of Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa. 109 

of ease and extravagance, of degrading the ideals of learn- 
ing by the parade of material things; and the universities 
boasting themselves of size without age need to be often 
reminded of the blasphemy of the impostor in the Acts of 
the Apostles, who thought to buy the gift of God with 
money. 

It is not to be supposed that Mr. Hobart, graduating at 
the age of 19, founded his success in life upon what he- 
learned at college, or even upon what he acquired as a 
school-teacher and student of law. Vet, it would be hard 
to overstate the advantages which a young man derives from 
tin- training of a college course and the arduous self-disci- 
pline of a school-teacher. A good teacher gives much to a 
School, hut the school gives to the teacher even more; so 

that it is not strange that so many men and women have 
.mui, from the patient labor of the district schoolroom into 
the larger service of their day and generation. Mr. H< iBART 
was in some sense a pioneer of the new professional life 
which in the larger American cities has abolished the old- 
fashioned attorney and made the new counselor at law a 
part of the industrial and commercial activity of tin- com- 
munity. While he had the faculty of plain and 
Speech, he was at no time in his career noted as an advo- 
cate, nor did he ever pose as a jurist weighed down with 
tin obsolete lore of the profession. 

He had the genius of success. As a student he copied 
papers and records in the law office which he afterwards 
owned, and for twenty years he was president of the hank 
in which he began as a clerk, during the trying period in 
which he was getting a foothold in the world. He was a 
man of affairs, who understood law as applied to modern 



no Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

business with perfect accuracy, and whose opinion on prac- 
tical questions involved in large enterprises soon came to 
be counted everywhere as sound. 

It has been observed by the older judges that the legal 
profession as it was known to our fathers has been notice- 
ably influenced to the revolutions of a modern business 
world. The orator who once captivated juries by his per- 
suasive eloquence is hardly more than a tradition, while 
the leader of the bar who once overawed the courts by the 
weight of his personal authority no longer finds an appre- 
ciative audience outside of the rural circuit. In their 
places have come experts in the various fields of business 
enterprise, shrewd and limited men who have taken the 
pains to know more about a few things than their predeces- 
sors ever had time to find out about everything. In such a 
professional atmosphere the common man is lost, and sinks 
to a cipher, without vital relation to the world at large of 
any sort, while the profession itself runs the risk of becom- 
ing a mere case-grinding drudgery in which the larger fac- 
ulties of the mind perish altogether. 

Mr. Hobart lived through the perils which beset the 
corporation lawyer of our times, rising year by year into a 
broader intellectual horizon ; and when the American peo- 
ple called him to the second office in their gift he was able 
to lock up his law office at Patersou, close the business 
engagements of a lifetime, and become the trusted coun- 
selor of all with whom he was associated in the Govern- 
ment of the United States. By his singular foresight he 
became a man of wealth, yet in his whole career no man 
ever suspected his integrity or disparaged his prosperity. 
He had the respect of poor and rich alike, and in the city 



Address of Mr. Dollivi t in 

where he lived his name inspired the confidence and affec- 
tion of all. He gained his wealth in a manly, honest way, 
and used it while he lived to help and bless the world. 
Few men have ever exhibited a more symmetrical life than 
his. 

'flu- thing that struck me most forcibly about him when 
I first knew him nearly twenty years ago was the fact that 
though his time was pressed upon by a varietv of engage- 
ments so innumerable as to encumber and bewilder any 
hut an extraordinary man. yet in the midst of all the cares 
of business he had time for politics, local and national; 
time for his church, time for his friends, and time 
fireside, from which he drew the gentlest inspirations of 
his laborious life. 

M\ acquaintance with Mr. Hobart began in tin slim- 
mer of i s,s p. when, as an inexperienced campaign speaker, 
much of him at the national headquarters of the 
committee which managed Mr. Blaine's Presidential can- 
vass. He was one of the extraordinary group of young 
men who were drawn about the person of Mr. Blaine by 
those remarkable qualities which made him so long the 
leader of his party, and I speak here to-day on this mourn- 
ful occasion because in those years I found in Mi. Hobart 
a friend whose counsel was always unselfish and whose 
hand was ever ready in acts of kindness and good will. In 
three ['residential campaigns I knew him as a political 
manager charged with the success of the part) to which 
he was devoted. I saw him da) and night in the v. 
the campaign, and while I have seen the storm oi 
and detraction gather about the heads of those who were 
.led with him in his party service, the fact that 



ii2 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

Garret A. Hobart shared in every responsibility of his 
associates lias always enabled me to feel that the working 
field of American politics, instead of being a corrupt and 
corrupting thing, is a high arena in which men of char- 
acter may serve their countrymen without dishonor or 
reproach. 

Surprise has been expressed by some that this plain man, 
whose name was comparatively obscure until his partv 
selected him as its candidate for the Vice- Presidency, should 
have been able to so exalt that office as to bring back the 
prestige which it bore in the earlier days of the Republic. 
To those who knew Mr. HOBART well there is nothingstrange 
in the fact that his brief service in the chair of the Senate 
dignified that public station with a new and high distinction. 
Few men knew more about American politics or had studied 
the public service of the United States to a better purpose 
than he. From the day he opened his law office in Paterson 
he was profoundly interested, both in theory and in practice, 
in the politics of his town, his county, his State, and his 
country. 

Mr. HOBART was a great Vice-President; first because he 
became easily the master of the duties of that office ; and 
then, so large and generous was the man himself that he 
brought to the office a personality which attracted at once 
the consideration of the whole Senate and the whole country. 
No man ever met him without receiving from him a word 
of helpfulness and good cheer, and no man ever entered his 
door without breathing at once the air of a perfect hospital- 
ity. His judgment was unerring upon questions involving 
public or party policy, and the man himself was too great 
to spend a minute of his time in spiteful disparagement of 
other men. 



Address of Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa. n^ 

It has been observed at least worthy of note that the late 
Vice-President, while he lived, was an adviser and intimate 
friend of the President, helping him to bear his burdens 
and giving him with an unselfish motive continual help 
and guidance in the midst of difficult affairs. It has been 
said that no such relation between the two offices was ever 
known before, and that with no exception our American 
Vice-Presidents, though many of them were strong and 
famous, have spent their time in undermining the influence 
of the President or in stupid lamentations over their own 
neglected and unimportant lot. 

If Mr. HOBART was loyal to the President it was not, 
as some have thought, because he was conscious of any 
disqualification in himself that would make his own aspira- 
tions to the Presidency out of place. It was rather because, 
knowing by experience more probably than anybody else 
about the nomination of Presidents and the election of 
them, he had acquired the wisdom to know that men are 
not lifted up in the estimation of the world by spending 
their time in trying to drag others down; and that the 
forces which make Presidents of the United States out .if men 
operate on too large a scale to be seriously affected by the 
gossip of the dinner table or the whisper of the cloakroom. 
Therefore, with a sane mind, grateful to his countrymen 
for the honor they had given him, he set himself to deliver 
the office of Vice-President from the cheap and petulant 
influences that have always beset it. How well he suc- 
eeeded all men know, and it is not too much to say that 
had he lived he would have drawn to himself such a 
measure of popular enthusiasm that his countrymen would 
have invited him to step from the second chariot into the 
S. Doc. |s.» s 



114 Life a '"1 Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

first. Already his name was spoken with honor in even- 
section of the country. On the day he died, in traveling 
over the prairies west of the Missouri, I saw upon every 
schoolhouse the flag at half-mast, and at every railway 
station groups of people talking in subdued voices of the 
death of Vice-President Hobart ; and wherever the flag 
of the United States is known, even in the ends of the 
earth, it became the sign of the universal affliction of his 
countrymen. We come here to-day to add our tribute to 
his memory. We cannot hope by what we say in the 
least to repair the loss which the nation has sustained in 
his death. We may not even presume with our faltering 
words of eulogy to console the broken hearts which have so 
recently followed him to the grave ; we can only commend 
them to God and the Word of His «race. 



Address of Mr. Daly, of New Jersey. 115 



ADDRESS OF MR I NEW JERSEY 

Mr. Speaker: Garret Augustus Hobart, Vice-Presi- 
dent of the United States, died at half past S o'clock on the 
morning of Tuesday, November 21, 1899, at his home in 
the city of Paterson, X. J. His death was not unexpected, 
for Mr. Hobart had made a strong battle for life before 
the summons came. All that medical science and the 
encouragement of friends could do was exerted in his 
behalf, but he had to succumb finally to the hand of death. 
Few men in the history of this country have grown into 
such -real prominence as Mr. Hobart from the time he 
became Vice-President of the United State- until the day 
of his death. I: was an unusual spectacle to behold, con- 
I with the past, a Vice-President of these United 
State- who W as close in touch with the molding of the 
polio of his party being accorded that consideration in 
the councils of the nation which has seldom been accorded 
t<> one occupying the position he did. It cannot be said 
that thi- recognition grew out of an} prominence 
attained in public life or from any great attainment- that 
he was himself master of; not 1 

any transcendent position he occupied in his 
ion; hut it can be truthfullj asserted that it was due 
trong personal character that admitted of hi- grasp- 
ing situations with celerity and a power of discrimination 
in his judgment of men and measures which conic to those 
who by perseverance and aggressiveness have been able to 
surmount obsl 'now down barrier- in order to 

flit. 



n6 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

Born in comparative obscurity, he possessed to a remark- 
able degree the energy and determination which have 
proved the mainspring of success in the lives of all suc- 
cessful men. 

He was born in historic Monmouth County, in the month 
of June, 1844. Monmouth, whose fields were consecrated 
to American liberty by the blood of patriots at old Mon- 
mouth Court-House, nigh unto the very soil that was trod- 
den bv such heroes as Washington, Wayne, Lafayette, Knox, 
Green, Steuben, and a host of others; near where Washing- 
ton and Lafayette, wrapped in a single cloak, lay down to 
rest the night before the battle of Monmouth Court-House, 
ami near where the brave Mollie Pitcher became famous and 
went down into history as the "woman cannoneer of Mon- 
mouth." With these environments it is little to be won- 
dered at that the late Vice-President, no doubt inspired by 
his patriotic surroundings, was urged onward to achieve 
glorv in civil life, which finally ended in his becoming 
the .second citizen of this great Republic. 

Like the majority of the great men of this nation, his 
early education was obtained in our country's greatest insti- 
tution — its common schools. He finished his education at 
old Rutgers College, graduating in the year 1863, and, as I 
understand it, soon entered upon the duties of a school- 
master, finally taking up the study of law and entering the 
ranks of that profession, no doubt, when he started out, 
intending to reach a position that might place him with 
some of the great legal lights that have made New Jersey 
famous. 

He was not long destined to remain in the ranks of the 
struggling attorney. This was not due to lack of educa- 



Address of Mr. Daly, of New fersey. 117 

tion or legal attainments, but to the tact that he found 
other pursuits more congenial, and he directed his attention 
to some of the great industrial interests of New Jersey. 
His legal ability must have been of a superior order, for 
we find that early in his professional career — 187 1 — he 
became counsel to the manufacturing city of Paterson, 
and a vear later counsel to the board of chosen freeholders 
of the county of Passaic. The appointment to these 
positions indicate that young HOBART was possessed 
of superior legal ability, for in the exercise of his duties 
he was compelled to pass upon grave constitutional and 
municipal questions, and no one could occupy either 
u unless a sure and safe legal education had been 
acquired. 

About this time— 1872— he entered the field of politics 
by being elected a member of the house of assembly for the 
cit) of Paterson. He was reelected iii 1873, an< ' '" t '" 
[874 his rank was such in his party that they honored him 
with the position of speaker. He entered the senate of the 
State in [876 and served in that body six years, twice occu- 
pying the distinguished position of president of the senate. 
During all this time he kept growing in the confidi 
the people, and his ability was such that he ranked as one 
of the leaders of the Republican party in the .State, and 
during this period, either in the house of assembly or in the 
, he was associated with and had foi his colleagues 
some of \ew Jersey's most eminent citizens. 

At one time or another there sat with him the dis- 
tinguished ami learned Chancellor McGill; Chief Justice 
Magie, of the supreme court of the State; ex-Governor 
George C. Ludlow; the senior Senator from New Jersey, 



nS Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

William J. Sewell, and my colleague, Mr. Gardner, of the 
First Congressional district of the State. Some of these 
that I have named were then but young men; some of 
them had not reached middle life, but they have since 
arisen preeminent in my State and in the nation, and do 
von wonder that with these surroundings the lamented 
Vice-President paved the way to ascend the ladder of fame? 
His verv contact with these men must have further excited 
his ambition as they moved along side by side in life's 
struggle. 

After he left the senate of New Jersey the bent of his 
energies was directed in the channel of business enterprise, 
and I am informed that at the time of his death he was 
interested to the extent of being director in more than 
sixty companies, banking and business interests. He be- 
came general manager of the East Jersey Water Company, 
and was president of the Passaic Water Company, the 
Paterson Railroad Company, and the People's Gas Com- 
pany. He was director in the First National and other 
banks of Paterson and elsewhere; was director of the Xew 
York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad, the Lehigh and 
Hudson River Railroad, Barbour Brothers Company, Bar- 
bour Flax Spinning Company, the Edison Electric Illumi- 
nating Company, and many other large institutions. His 
connection with these great concerns demonstrated his 
great financial and business ability, for from struggling 
corporations he built some of them up, by his persever- 
ance and the exercise of wisdom and discretion, to be the 
greatest industries of our State, and through his connec- 
tion with these institutions he laid the foundation for the 
building up of the great fortune he left behind. 



of New ft rsey. no. 

With all these interests absorbing his time and energies, 
you would imagine he would lose sight of the people; that 
he would lose sight of the governmental interests and poli- 
cies of State and nation; but nevertheless, he kept in close 
touch with his party and his party's leaders and the coun- 
try. Ever genial, ever kind, possessed of a strong magnet- 
ism, his party and people sought his advice and counsel, 
and he maintained that hold upon them that even while 
occupied with business interests he guided the policv of his 
party in his State and guided its policy in the nation. The 
power that he possessed in the great interests of h 
would have made some men arrogant, overbearing, and sel- 
fish; hut never once have I known it to lie said of him that 
his political or his business preferment ever made him lose 
sight of the fact that he was plain Garret A. Hoi 
He possessed all tin- attributes of a leader. He w 

ory, vet brave; extremeh partisan, but generous to a 
political opponent. His presiding over the Senate and his 
ever-courteous bearing toward all parties demonstrated his 
strength of character, for public history has recorded the 
fact that the stronger the partisan and the greatei the leader 
the less arbitrary his conduct when called upon to exercise 
on iii trying situations. 1 >f course there are excep- 
tions to this rule, but in the main this principle will apply. 
I knew Air. HOBART well. As a member of the senate 
of the State of New Jersej 1 frequently came in contact 
with him at the statehouse and had many opportunities to 
judge of his character. I do not wonder that when he came 
to Washington he made the same impression upon those 
he came in contact with that he did in his own State. 
Those who knew him well loved him ; those who knew him 
not so well admired him. 



120 Life and Character of Carrel A. Hobart. 

The tribute paid Mr. Hobart by his colleagues in the 
Senate speaks eloquently and forcibly of his fairness in 
presiding over the deliberations of that body. Grave public 
questions were involved during his occupancy of the chair 
as presiding officer and it has yet to be said that he ever 
exercised any arbitrary power or discriminated in favor of 
one or the other, but treated all alike. 

I have never heard Air. Hobart criticised save for being 
a partisan; but, Mr. Speaker, to my mind that was a trib- 
ute, for when a man enters public life he does it through 
the channels of some political party to which he has become 
devoted, and if, forsooth, his party err on some given 
proposition, yet for the good his party has done he remains 
true, relying upon the conservative element to correct the 
error when the proper time comes, and not rise and strike it 
down that upon its ruins might be erected and perpetuated 
another. Such a partisan was Mr. Hobart, and such politi- 
cal characters live in the hearts of men when party destroyers 
have passed into oblivion. 

Mr. Hobart's strict attention to public business, his 
attention to his private interests, and that genial disposition 
of his nature which led him to attend to the calls that 
society made upon him soon undermined the vigorous con- 
stitution of which he was possessed, so that on the 4th of 
March, 1899, he, with the President and Senator Hanna, 
took themselves to the quiet retreat of Thomasville, Ga., 
there to recuperate and build up his physical and nervous 
condition. It was there that he was first taken seriously 
ill, and he soon returned to Washington. As his sickness 
progressed he longed for his home by the sea at Long 
Branch, to be near the scenes of his earliest childhood in 



Address of Mr. Daly, of New Jersey. 121 

the county of his nativity, hoping that the ocean's breezes 

might benefit him and the dreary monotony be relieved by 

gazing upon the scenes of pleasure of that locality. But 

relief came not, and I have no doubt as he looked on the 

waves breaking their force upon the shores and calmly 

receding the thought of the poet was suggested: 

ive, joy to thee; 
Now thy flight and toil are over; 
( »h, may my departure be 

Calm as thine, thou ocean rover. 

When this sad soul's last joy on earth 

( in the shore of time is driven, 
Be its lot like thine on earth, 

To be losl away in heaven. 

He practically spent the entire summer at Long Branch, 
save for a short trip to Lake Champlain, where he went to 
join the President. In the early fall he returned to his 
home in Paterson, and there lingered, battling with disease, 
until the date I have mentioned, when he departed this life. 

No tribute that tongue can pay can be as grand as the 
tribute paid by the people of his adopted city .is he lay in 
death in Carroll Hall. Public business was suspended, 
great manufacturing interests closed that thousands in that 
busy city might join in the manifestations of sorrow that 
pervaded our entire country. What a scene was that, Mr. 
Speaker, when the rich and the poor and the great men of 
our nation were bending their heads in .sorrow in the streets 
of that city, all alike feeling the loss of a -real public 
servant and benefactor. The personality of the man was 
alike to all; the same stuiin smile was for the rich as the 
poor, and the same cordial greeting was bestowed upon 
everyone he came in contact with. His generous liberality 
was appreciated by everyone. 



122 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

I wish that I had the eloquence to pay that tribute his 
memory deserves. I!\ those who knew him he will be 
fondly spoken of until the last survivor has passed away, 
and when history shall write him, he shall live as one who 
loved his country, who loved its institutions and its people. 
I cannot better summarize than to say he lived a true life, 
and in the language of the great philanthropist, Horace 
Greeley, who said: "Whoever seeks to know if his career 
has been prosperous and brightening from its outset to its 
close should ask not for broad acres or towering edifices or 
laden coffers; ask rather, Did he live a true life?" 

Garret Hobart lived a true life, and as he lived a true 
life, so much greater shall be his reward in the hereafter. 
In a quiet spot in Cedar Lawn Cemetery reposes all that of 
him was mortal, there to rest until called forth on the 
resurrection morning to enjoy eternal happiness in the 
presence of his Redeemer. 



Address of Mr. Fowler^ of New Jerse 



ADDRESS OF MR. FOWLER, OF NEW JERSEY. 
Mr. Speaker: < tARRET A. H( ibart still lives, both yonder 
ami here. His soul nourished the hope of immortality, and 
his life here was so consonant with that hope that his life 
there will be but an exalted, beautified, and glorified reali- 
zation of his ideals. 

He was a typical man; typical because he illustrated in 
an almost matchless degree the best of our civilization. 
During all the ages, in art and architecture, in poetry and 
philosophy, those only have left permanent influem 
the welfare of the human race and have moved the stand- 
ard- of right living onward and upward who typified those 
ideals that will forever mark their times. GARRET A. 
Hobart was the highest type of the American citizen of 
his day. 

In this eager age of wealth gathering, over against the 
hot haste, in bold relief, stands every virtue: and he who in 
tin- midst of the mad rush illustrates those virtues truly 
typifies all that is best of his time. Von will search in vain 
the long list of noble lives ending with the centui 
life that more completely and beautifulh exemplifies and 
symbolizes the essential virtues of our civilization than that 

of II( IBART. 

bom upon a farm, he started life at the lowest round of 
the ladder of human endeavor, but never missed 
in its ascent, as the farm boy, the district-school lad, the 
college student, the teacher, the lawyer, tin- State repre- 
sentative, the man of stupendous business affairs, the ideal 
Vice-President of the United States. 



124 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

Is honesty for its own sake one of the essentials of Ameri- 
can manhood? Garret A. Hobart stood for all that that 
word can suggest; he could not even think dishonestly. 
He was a stranger to indirection. His plans were great, 
but as open as the sunlight. His honor was the "finest 
sense of justice the human mind can frame." He was too 
broad and generous to cavil over technicalities; with him 
implication was as binding as his bond. Intent, not forms 
of words, determined his action. 

Are the boundless burdens of our highly organized society 
to be voluntarily assumed by every true friend of mankind ? 
This was his belief, for he gave his great heart of sympathy 
and generous hand to every good work. 

If the influence of loyalty to principle and fidelity to 
duty be sought in its highest development, we need seek 
no other illustration than his lift. 

No man had a profounder and sweeter sympathy or 
enjoyed more the fragrance of a friend's heart. His was a 
friendship which, once pledged, never swerved; weighed 
well before it trusted, but did not weigh before it served. 

A'ery recently a lifelong companion remarked that if 
Hobart happened by any chance to learn that a friend 
wanted something, he would straightway try to obtain it 
for him. When the shadows of life were thickening, and 
he knew well that the sun would shine through them no 
more, he expressed an earnest wish that he might do a 
kindness for one, who, he said, had been true to him. 

His was a truly noble life; simple, yet exalted. He made 
his character by being what he desired to seem. 

What essential quality or virtue did he not possess? He 
was instinctively intelligent and profoundly just. He pos- 



Address of Mr. Fowler, of New Jersey. 125 

sessed great talents, and his tact was boundless. His judg- 
ment was almost unerring and his generosity limitless. His 
patriotism was calm and unswerving. He was the very 
soul of honor. He harbored no bitter hatreds; he nursed 
no relentless animosities. His friendship was a devotion. 
His character was as pure and spotless as a star. 

His was a life of sunshine, and it cast no shadows. What 
circumstance, what incident, what event, what endeavor, 
what achievement, what private obligation, what public 
duty, what institution, what personal relationship, what 
human life was not more fortunate because the soul of 
GARRET A. HOBART had touched it' J And so he still 
speaks in ten thousand sweet influences that can know no 
ending; and the world will forever be the better because he 
once lived in it. 

\\\^ name, reaching 'town tin- age "t time, 

Will still through the age of eternity shine 

Like a star, sailing on through tin- depths of the blue, 

011 whose brightness we gaze every evening anew. 



126 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. GLYNN, OF NEW YORK. 

Mr. Speaker: In behalf of a number of my fellow- 
Democratic Congressmen from New York State, I lay a 
laurel wreath at the door of the tomb of Garret A. 
Hobart. My words but echo their thoughts; their 
thoughts but reflect the feelings of their hearts; their heart- 
feelings but mirror forth the opinions and beliefs of the 
American people. Mine was not the pleasure of a per- 
sonal accpiaiutance with the distinguished statesman whose 
memory we revere to-day. Had it been, I would feel myself 
better qualified to speak the eulogy which I am about to 
utter, but public men live in their works as authors live in 
their books and as artists abide in their pictures — there to 
be the subject forever of discussion at the pens of writers, 
the tongues of speakers, and the minds of critics. No one 
living to-day had a personal acquaintance with Jefferson, 
Shakespeare, or Michael Angelo, yet who living to-day in 
this broad laud can be said to be unacquainted with Angelo, 
Shakespeare, and Jefferson, who live, though dead? In the 
analogy of this thought lies my reason for uttering the fol- 
lowing sentiments of respect, shared in common by my 
Democratic confreres. 

To voice a proper description of Garret A. Hobart 
would be to delineate the last four years of the political 
history of the United States, to epitomize the political inci- 
dents of the State of New Jersey for a decade at least, and 
to narrate many chapters in the commercial annals of the 
upbuilding of American commerce and the fostering of 



Address of Mr. Glynn, of New York. 127 

American manufacturing. However much one may differ 
with the political principles advocated by the late Vice- 
President, he must confess that in the workings of his own 
personal career, in the undertakings of his legal profession, 
and in the consummation of his business plans. ( , 
A. Hobart was a constructer and not a destroyer. Most 
men die without creating; few die without destroying. He- 
has lived well upon the tombstone of whose grave can be 
carved the verity, "Herein lieth a man who was a creator 
and not a destroyer." In his tribute President Mckinley 
is grand a euology to the memory of Garret A. 
HOBART as man could utter when in his last message to 
Congress he said: 

His i>; ■ while his publii 

distinguisl - integrity, and exalted motives. 

Hi- lias been removed from tin- high office which he honored and digni- 

ti r, his devotion t<> dutj . lii^ honest) ■ >: | 
and noble virtues remain with us a 

In the life of Garret A. Hobart can he found the 
lesson that inspiration comes of working even day. He. 
as much as any other man of his time, has given proof that 
genius is encompassed in the ability of doing a hard day's 
work and doing it on every working day in the year. He 
did all things well because he did all things intensely. 
He had learned that in things where the heart is not, the 
hand is never powerful. From his life we learn that 
greatness flows not from chance, nor from a mere happj 
combination of events, hut simply from the magic of un- 
wavering determination, clear apprehension, and ceaseless 
toil. GARRET A. HOBART became a great man because he 
possessed these qualifications and because they enabled him 
to fill great occasions. IK- had the abilities, the confidence, 



J 28 Life and Character of d arret A. Hobart. 

and the stamina to meet momentous occasions, and there- 
fore such occasions marked him and called him to be what 
the successes of his abilities, confidence, and stamina would 
make him. Jackson, Lincoln, Clay, Blaine, and Tilden all 
drew their greatness from this same fountain head; ave, 
more, all the great master spirits, all the founders and law- 
givers of empires, all the defenders of the rights of men, 
all the upbuilders of the greatness of a nation, are made 
by these same laws. 

It is fitting that we should pause in the rushings of our 
work-a-day world to pay tribute to a man who, l>v the sheer 
force of ability, carved his way from "a man with the hoe" 
to be the occupant of the seat of the Vice- Presidency of the 
United States. ( )nly from the facts of a life like this is 
composed substantial thought. All other thought is mere 
speculation, mathematical philosophy, a puncture by the 
rapier of probability into the clouds of guess-land. It is 
well that we should pause and reflect upon the incidents of 
such a life, because, when events daily increase in the grow- 
ing magnitude of a nation like ours, history becomes a 
dwarf and passes into biography and there is need in the 
rapidity of national advancement for the microscope to be 
placed on every honored son of the Government, so that he 
may be seen in his true grandeur and taken at his true 
worth. To the student the life of Garret A. Hobart 
must drive home the fact that glory is only a furrow in the 
dust, but at tlie same time it can not help teaching that it 
is worth while to stamp that dust under foot, so as thereon 
to leave an impression by which the world and posterity 
may know that we have once journeyed along the road of 
life. 



Address of Mr. Glynn, of New York. 129 

Some one has said that death transforms an opponent into 
a friend. In a political sense this cannot be said to apply 
to the man whose loss we mourn to-day. Even his hardest 
political opponents never allowed the smoke of the fiercest 
political battles to blind their visions as to the sterling 
worth of Hobart. They recognized that in politics, as in 
war, the greatest men are those who never capitulate. 
They realized that while men of different political faiths 
differ as to everything on earth, they may some day be 
united in what is larger than everything mundane, in what 
embraces the sum total of life and thought — the arms of 
Providence. History teaches us that as great men . see the 
right more rightly than small or mediocre minds, so they 
see the faNe inure falsely. The knowledge of this fact 
to opponents in politics a brotherhood and a manli- 
ness that almost deify differences of opinion and sweeten 
the acrimonies of opposition. 

1 rom a farmer's son < '.arki-.t A. Hobart worked his way 
through college and made himself a legal light of his Slate 
and a powei in the politics of the nation. His ascendency 
was like the atoms of the soiling charcoal that we little 
value, becoming by wise combinations and gradual arrange- 
ments the resplendent diamond which ever) eye admires. 
Grandly, indeed, in all the workings of his life did this son 
of the masses attest the fact that from the pure, untainted 
blood of the common people come the rulers of the world. 
Grandly did he perform his business functions lor his asso- 
ciates, his official functions fo] his country, and accomplish 
in of mediocre minds could nevei ao 1 >m- 
plish. The people of his native State loved him, his busi- 
111 s associates loved him, his opponents respected him; 
S. I >oc. 450 9 



13" Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

and men are not wont to cherish so deeply that which is 
not deserving of their love and admiration. According 
to Edmund Bnrke — 

Reproach 1- concomitant with greatness; envy grows in a direct propor- 
tion with fame, ami censure is the tax that every man must pay the public 
for being eminent. 

Iii the main these assertions are true, but in the history 
of ( rARRET A. Hi iBART is found the exception which proves 
the rule of their truthfulness. Throughout all his under- 
takings Mr. Hobart exercised an indomitable will to 
acquire and retain success. He found no joys in the 
intrigues of the wanton courtier; his heart was not wedded 
to the revels of pleasure; his soul always took flight beyond 
the ticklings of sense. With him one great goal was always 
in view and the- desire to reach it was father of all his 
efforts. Such ambition has served the world in good stead. 
It has worked like the desire of the philosopher's stone on 
the chemists of old. The object of their search was truly 
a chimera, nevertheless it was productive of a real good in 
the shape of modern chemistry. In like manner civiliza- 
tion owes inestimable advantages to such ambition as 
HOBART'S, though the honor which is the object of its 
quest may prove a will-o'-the-wisp. It was the spur that 
goaded Hobart on from business triumph to business 
triumph, from office to office, only in the end to find him- 
self Vice-President and this country the richer for his 
ambition. It is the motive power that has ever kept the 
wheel of progress in motion and prevented the world from 
loitering on the path to advancement. Far be it from my 
intention to canonize Mr. Hobart. In his career he must 
have made some mistakes — else he would not have been a 



Address of Mr. Glynn, of New York. 131 

man — but that man is the greatest who makes the fewest, 
and HOBART'S missteps are far outweighed by his many 
noble deeds and kind offices. In fact, to whatever short- 
comings may have been his we can apply the words of the 

poet: 

n the sunshine, foam-bells on th 
Cloud shadows flitting o'er tin.- mountain'-, breast — 
His faults but marked the might; play, the motion 
Of a grand nature in its grand unrest. 

To say that Garret A. Hobart was an eloquent man 
would be to do injustice to the great men who have attained 
eminence by the arts of Demosthenes and the attributes of 
Cicero, and at the same time to make that assertion would 
shadow of disrespect upon that grand instru- 
ment by which Mr. Hobart achieved distinction, that 
most potential of instruments within the grasp of man — 
personal influence. Those who carefully note the compara- 
tive value of lives in a community soon learn that the 
element which counts for most is that subtle thing called 
pets,, n. 1! influence. In it there is something more potent 
than monej 01 speech, a mystic force which flows out from 
it and magnetizes all that come within its range. It is to 
ul man what fragrance is to the flower, what 
light is to the lamp. It is part and parcel of his personal- 
ity; yet it reaches outside and beyond himself. That Gar- 
ret A. HOBART was endowed with this magnetic power in 
a remarkable degree is evinced from tin- facts stated in this 
House to-day be the gentleman win, knew him well and 
knew him long. The value of this personal influence was 
greatlj augmented by a great human sympathy and a mas- 
sive manly sense, communicating to his associates and 
allies new life and energy, touching and unsealing in their 



132 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

breasts the springs of resolution and self-help, and flooding 
them with soul-cheer. 

In life there is nothing except what we put in it. In the 
fifty-three years of his life Garret A. Hobart crowded so 
much work, so many successes, so numerous duties as to 
merit from the American people that most eloquent tribute 
paid to Goethe by the Emperor of Germany when he met 
him and exclaimed: "You are a man." Miehelet has gone 
into raptures over the force of that compliment paid to the 
great German poet, and the American people may well be 
pleased that there died in harness as the second highest 
official in the land a man who could well be called "a man." 
From his generosity we know that he appreciated the fact 
that flowers fade without dew and light. From his amiable 
personality we are sure that he realized the imperishable 
truths that charity and love are the dew and light of the 
human heart. He was not of the pessimistic mind, which 
holds that while nations ascend in civilization governments 
descend in administration. He was not of those who are 
constantly living in the dusk of the past, but rather one of 
those who by the light of the past purpose to see to it that 
the administration of governments keeps step with the civ- 
ilization of nations. From the fate of Lot's wife being- 
turned into a statue of salt for looking back, he had gar- 
nered the determination to press ever onward in accordance 
with the thought that he only lives who acts in the present 
and thinks of the future. 

Despite the millions and millions of people on earth, the 
world knows only two kinds of minds— minds that are 
metaphysical pure and simple and metaphysical only, and 
minds that are not. In Robespieire and St. Louis we have 



Address of Mr. Glynn, of New York. 133 

examples of the mere metaphysical mind. Those that are 
not metaphysical are more or less fatalistical. The minds 
that work out the most for the amelioration of mankind 
arc the minds that are not only metaphysical, but also 
reflective of their antithesis. In Charlemagne and St. 
Augustin we have the greatest examples of this sort of 
mind, while in HOBART it is duplicated in essence, though 
;„ rhaps not in totality. It is such a mind that makes man 
the ardent believer in the dispensations of an all-wise 
Providence, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the 
gentleman from New York, the leader of the majority, 
represent Mr. Hobart to have been. 

In his religious inclination.- and political enthusiam lie 
must have been somewhat akin to Cardinal de Berulle. 
Students of French history will remember that when La 
Rochelle, under Louis XIII, resisted Richelieu so hand- 
somely, Richelieu became frightened and wanted to effect 
a treaty. Cardinal de Berulle persuaded Richelieu to devi- 
,m this course on account of a certain something, he 
knew not what, which he called "trust in Cod." Riche- 
lieu, a strong-minded man, made fun of him and insolently 
asked De Berulle when Cod was to keep his promise. De 
Berulle replied with magnificent simplicity, "I am without 
enlightenment, but not without thoughts, and, since you 
command, I will tell them to you. I count on La Rochelle 
,,s I counted on the Island of Rhe. I expect success, not 
from the siege, nor from the assault, nor from the blockade, 
but from some prompt and unexpected effort." And so 
with Hobart; if he thought his cause was right, he was 
read) to fight— to fight calmly, easily, diplomatically, so as 
to make little bluster and but few enemies, but confident 



134 Life aiid Character of (Jarre/ A. llobart. 

that he must win, because he thought he had right with 
him and because he believed that right would somehow 
win, even if it had to be helped from above by "a prompt 
and unexpected effort." 

The political career of Garret A. Hobart affords an 
interesting comparison between the politics of to-day and 
the politics of years ago. Caesar Borgia was a giver of 
battles with poison. Bonaparte was a giver of battles with 
cannon. Hobart was a giver of battles with diplomacy, 
sagacity, and parliamentary etiquette, and so typifies the' 
methods of the present as against the methods of the past, 
as found in Borgia and Napoleon in the olden days, when 
they were wont to destroy men so as not to destroy nations 
by allowing them to hurl themselves one against another. 
In those davs personalities occupied the whole space of the 
political arena, masses none. In our day the masses are 
the unit of the political battle, personalities simply the 
kindling wood of a little enthusiasm. Battles took place 
then between prince and prince. A mere ordinary man 
was an obstacle, and was treated as such. That was called 
politics; and, bad as it was, for those who love humanity it 
was better than war. Politics then was a game between 
elevated heads; now it is a contest between millionaire, 
lawyer, laborer, and men in general, in which Garret A. 
HOBART has proved that in the United States of America 
the son of a poor farmer can, by his own merit and his own 
ability, become a Caesar of the purest type and a Napoleon 
in both finance and politics of the greatest influence. The 
lives of Caesar Borgia and Napoleon show that murder and 
force were the instruments of success in the politics of 
olden days. The life of Hobart gives proof that the 



Address of Mr. Glynn, of New York. 135 

political triumphs of to-day are the victories of intellec- 
tual supremacy— not perhaps of one man, but of some 
party, some principle, as represented by supporters and 
champions. 

Garret A. Hobart is no more. In the councils of his 
party there is a vacant chair; in the halls of our National 
Legislature there reigns an air of mourning; in the busi- 
ness circles of the country there are being written resolu- 
tions of respect and memorials of condolence; but for all 
this sorrow there is consolation in the fact that while he 
lived he was a power among men; consolation in the knowl- 
edge that in honor of his memory the hand of History 
will write upon her everlasting tablets and beneath the 
name of GARRET A. HOBART: 

So rnix'd in him, that Nature might I 

And say to al] the world, " This was a man! " 



Lye and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. SALMON, OF NEW JERSEY. 

Mr. Speaker: I would not attempt at this time to add 
to what has been so well said in the Senate and in this 
House upon the life of our lamented Vice-President, were 
it ni.it that his home was so near my own and my acquaint- 
ance with him had been so pleasant. It is natural for men 
to value an acquaintance with one who has risen to a 
position of honor and distinction. The memory of such 
acquaintance is inspiring and encouraging. 

I first met Mr. HOBART in 1878, when he was a member 
of the New Jersey- senate and I of the house of assembly. 
I well remember his quiet, genial manner, and his smooth 
yet decided way in dealing with matters requiring his 
attention. He never impressed his partisanship ujaon those 
who differed with him, while at the same time he was 
earnest and strong in his efforts to secure his object. I met 
him occasionally between our first acquaintance and his 
election as Vice-President, and he always exhibited the 
same genial manner and courteous dignity. 

Mr. Hobart had a comprehensive mind with quick 
perception, and he was thoroughly executive in character. 
He wielded his power not by physical force or menacing 
threats, but by an irresistible force of reason and persuasion 
tliat so rarely accompanies the strong will and determined 
purpose. His tact in leading others to accept his conclu- 
sions was more than ordinary. 

Goethe said, "The difference between great and little 
men is in the amount, of energy applied to their undertak- 
ings." Mr. HOBART was a hard worker. He applied his 



Address of Mr. Salmon, of New Jersey. 137 

mind closely and incessantly to his business. I know of 
his expressing weariness and a lack of satisfaction in mere 
business success before his election to the Vice- Presidency. 
His soul was too great to be satisfied by the mere accumu- 
lation of wealth. Though it may not be said that he made 
opportunities, yet by his fortunate location opportunities 
offered, and he had the grasp and energy of mind to 
take advantage of and develop them. 

The city of Paterson, to which, from his native county of 
Monmouth, he came when a young man, has been progress- 
ive beyond most Eastern cities. Since the civil war it lias 

from a mere town to a city of about too, 1 people. 

It is a thoroughly manufacturing city. Its industries are 
and always have Keen varied. In iron manufactories and 
silk mills are extensive. Because of the great number and 
varied character of its silk factories it has been called the 
"Lyons" of America. With this enterprising peop 
HOBART made his home when a young man, and there 
he found opportunities for the employment of his rare 

The lessons taught by his life are different from those 
taughl by the lives of most men whose names are honored 
in oui country's annals. Few indeed are they who, having 
gained high political station as well as eminent business 
success, retain the esteem and love of their fellow-men to 
the time of their death as he did. 

Mr. lb iBART has been called from this life at an age when 
he mi [3 have been expected to be in the vi.^or 

"i health and mental activity. IK- was but litth ; 
years old at the lime of his death. 

• hi- honors to the world 

.en, and .slept in peace. 



138 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 

The years he lived fell far short of the allotted length of 
man's life; yet if we measure life by what is accomplished, 
there have been few in our country who have lived as long 
as he lived. 

If any are discouraged and feel that they cannot succeed, 
they will find in the history of his life an inspiration to 
hope and persevere; if any are inclined to believe that 
kindness and courtesy are nut proper elements in the char- 
acter of the strong and successful man, they should recall 
the scene at the funeral of the deceased Vice- President, 
where thousands gathered and with bowed heads attested 
their sorrow because of his untimely demise. 

Patriots have toiled, and in their country's cause 
Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, 
Receive proud recompense. We give in charge 
Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic Muse, 
Proud of the treasure, marches with it down 
To latest times; and Sculpture, m her turn, 
Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass 
To guard them, and to immortalize her trust. 



s of Mr. (,; I Wo. 139 



ADDRESS OF MR. GROSVENOR, OF OHIO. 

Mr. Speaker: The death of Garret A. Hobart brings 
forcibh to our minds some features of our political history 
which, aside from the personal consideration, are of pro- 
found importance. The office of Vice-President has not 
been considered by our people as possessing that degree of 
importance which it would seem ought to appertain to that 
position. Death has more than once laid low the Pi 
of the I United States and opened that great office to the con- 
stitutional sn different Vice-Presidents have- 
died in office — George Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, William R. 
King, Henry Wilson, Thomas A. Hendricks, and now Gar- 
ret A. H< fB VRT. 1 wish 1 1 an evt nt in 
our history curious, interesting, and important. 1: - 
upon the nee fu] arrangement in the m 
succession in high office. 

Thomas A. Hendricks, who had been elected Vice-Presi- 
dent with Mr. Cleveland at his first term, died during a 
vacation of Congress. In other words, he died when there- 
was no House of Representatives in existenci 
ized body. Mr. Hendricks had studiously prevented the 
election of a President pro tempore of the Senati 
construction given to the constitutional provision that "in 
the absence of the Vice-Presidenl 01 when he shall exercise 
the office of President <>f th( United States" the Senate 
might elect a President pro tempore operated to permit the 
Vice-President to preside s ( > constanth in the Senate that 
no temporary presiding officer could he fleeted. And so it 



140 Life and Character of Garret . 1. Hobart. 

was that when Mr. Hendricks died there was no President 
pro tempore of the Senate. Xor was there a Speaker of the 
House of Representatives; for the House of Representa- 
tives had expired on the 4th of March preceding. The 
effect of this was to leave but one life between organized 
government and chaos; and that life was the life of Mr. 
Cleveland. 

Mr. Cleveland did not go to the funeral of his vice- 
presidential associate. There was very considerable criti- 
cism in the press and everywhere throughout the country 
because of what seemed to bean indifference manifested bv 
.Mr. Cleveland. Afterwards the real reason came out, and 
was complimentary to the kindly nature and generous 
heart of Mr. Cleveland. He was preparing for the long 
journey in the inclement weather of November to attend 
the funeral at Indianapolis, when the question suggested 
itself to some one — not the President, as it was under- 
stood — that it was hardly the right thing for him to do, to 
travel all the way to Indianapolis, exposing himself to the 
danger of railroad accidents and cither contingencies, and 
upon the advice of gentlemen of both parties, Mr. Cleve- 
land withdrew his engagement and remained in the city of 
Washington. 

It is easy to see how wise was his precaution. Had he 
been killed in an accident or in any other way lost his life, 
there was no chart to guide the people of the country in 
supplying his place. Thereupon, and for this reason, and 
growing out of this very circumstance, as I understand, 
Congress passed the existing law cutting off the succession 
ol the Speaker of the House and conferring it (following 
the Vice-President, the successor by the terms of the Con- 



Address of Mr. Grosvenor, of Ohio. 141 

stitution) upon the Secretary of State and, successively, 
upon the other members of the Cabinet in the order named 
in the statute. This covers all the member-, of the Cabinet 
except the Secretary of Agriculture, an office created since 
the passage of that law and which, therefore, was not enu- 
merated by the act. And so we have assured safety again. 

Garret A. Hobart brought the office of Vice-President 
to a higher degree of value than it had ever had since we 
were acquainted with the operations of the Government. 
He was a man of strong personality, a man of high business 
qualifications, thorough political training ami sagacity, 
genial-minded, warm-hearted, a lovable and admirable per- 
sonality. And lu- came to his high office with a purpose to 
ite, not segregate, the office. His nomination at 
St. Louis was not the accident of political movements by 
any means. To a great main men who participated in the 
tics of [896 the nomination of Hobart 
was as well assured before Congress adjourned a-* it was after 
the ballot was dee',. I 

He was a fitting coadjutor of the splendid Administration 
of William McKinley. This is no time nor place, perhaps, 
to eulogize the current Administration. It may be proper, 
however, to say that in all its personalty, in all it- conduct 
of affairs, the mode and manner of its procedure, the c< intact 
of its officials with the public, the dignity and beai 
the Chief Magistrate and those about him. this Administra- 
tion has been popular and admirable. And there v> 
one feature of the Administration, aside from tin- great 
aality of the President, that was so attractive to the 
people of the United States as was the personality and par- 
ticipation of I 1' IBART. 



142 Life and Character of Garret A, Hobart. 

As I have said, he did not come here to isolate his office 
and simply be the presiding officer of the Senate, but he 
came here to become of the Administration, to be of its 
councils, to be of its advisers. And the President gladly 
availed himself of the wisdom, the knowledge, and the 
administrative ability of the Vice-President. Their friend- 
ship was as the friendship of brothers. The proximity of the 
residence of the Vice-President to the Executive Mansion 
made association easy, and all forms of dignified distance 
and ceremonial intercourse were for the most part set aside. 
A close association between the President and the Vice- 
President was one of the great features of the period, 

Mr. Hobart stamped himself upon the results of legis- 
lation. He had no vote, but he had a voice, and his judg- 
ment commended itself to Senators and Representatives. 
During his incumbency of the Vice-Presidential office more 
than one great event in legislation happened. The enact- 
ment of the Dingley law and the ratification of the Spanish 
treaty were two most memorable contests; and no man 
outside of the President had more to do with carrying 
those measures to a successful issue than did GARRET A. 
Hobart. His wisdom, his just appreciation of others, his 
kindness of heart, his magnetism, and his personality in 
general made him a great factor in reaching the results 
that grew otit of those matters. 

Of his social life I had but limited personal knowledge; 
yet I came to be impressed, as others did, with the warmth 
of his character, with his geniality. He came in contact 
with American citizens as an American citizen. He had 
no pride of place that compared with his pride and love of 
home and home ties. Others will speak more fully of 



, fj of Mr. i , Ohio. 143 

these characteristics. As husband and father, as citizen 
and politician, as Vice-President, and as a high official in 
other places his life was above criticism, his efficiency 
beyond disparagement, and his memory will be to us all a 
benediction. 

Mr. Speaker, I bow with reverence and humility 1" fore 
the awful blow that Providence delivered upon the Amer- 
ican people in the untimely death of Hobart. I seek to 
look beyond the darkness of the clouds that lower upon 
us, and have faith to believe that beyond them there shines 
the light of the countenance of the Father of us all, who 
"doeth all things well." But it is difficult sometimes to 
iliation that is due; we naturally 
come hack to the human standard, and wonder while we 
bow our heads. We must he rescued from a condil 
revolt by the assurance, which we must take with blind 
faith, "He doeth all things well." 



144 Life and Character of Garret A. Hobart. 



ADDRESS OF MR. GARDNER, OF NEW JERSEY. 

Mr. Speaker: The frequency with which this body is 
called upon to pay the last sad tribute to the memory of 
the eminent dead is a most forceful reminder of man's mor- 
tality. Verily, "He cometh forth like a flower and is cut 
down." The generations appear like the leaves of spring 
and flourish for a season only, then, smitten by the breath 
of the Destroyer, fall, even as the leaves that wither and 
scatter in autumn's searing blasts. But the earth itself, the 
abode of man, shall perish; the visible heavens shall pass 
away; for there is nothing permanent but the law and the 
love and the kingdom of God. 

We pause in our labors to-day to do homage to the mem- 
ory of one who was not a member of this House, but who, 
in his high office, represented the suffrage and the majesty 
of the great Republic. 

Garret A. Hobart had, from his early manhood, been 
singled out by common consent in his own State as the per- 
sonality most abounding in promise of great service and 
future honor to his State ; but he was greater perhaps than 
we knew, for when he rose to a commanding position among 
the nation's lights, it was seen that he was in his sphere ; 
and when he died, all knew that a luminary of great power 
had fallen from the national sky. 

The career of Mr. Hobart is another of those oft-recur- 
ring lessons of the opportunities offered to young American 
manhood, and demonstrated that energy, integrity, and 
courage, if seconded by real ability, may conquer all the 
weary paths that lie between the lowly and the highest 



Address of Mr. Gardner, of New Jersey. 14s 

estate and lead triumphantly to the most exalted station; 
for he rose with no aid but his merit, with no friend but his 
and with no claim to recognition but his fitness. 
Garret Augustus Hobart was born on a farm near 
Long Branch, X. J., in 1N44. of New England and Newjer- 
icestry, which ran hack to the English and the Dutch. 
Quii kness of perception and comprehension, energy, phys- 
ical and mental stamina, fidelity to duty, high courage, and 
an entire veracity of mind were his by inheritance and were 
dicable. It is difficult to believe he ever had a vice to 
overcome. 

Young Hobart was educated in the common schools an 
1>\ his lather, until he entered Rutgers College, from which 
he was graduated in [863, before he was [9 vears of a»e. 
Alter a brief period as an educator lie began the study of 
law in Paterson, X. J., under the tutelage of his father's 
also of Wu England stock, Socrates Tuttle, a gen- 
tleman of great ability, fine attainments, and splendid char- 
Ile was graduated from Mr. Tuttle's office and 
admitted to the bar of New Jersey; then began his re al 

Mr. Hobart later was united in marriage with Miss fen- 
nie Tuttle, daughter ol his legal preceptor. < if that union 
1 shall speak but briefly now, for to dwell upon it would 
seem like the mingling of notes of discord with the funeral 
dirge, and an unpardonable rudeness to her who did so much 
to hedge round his life with happ\ environment and to 
his days with joy. Let it suffice tosaythat the ston 
of their wedded life and home in Paterson, when told, will 
be "A sweet savor wherever happ) homes are recognized as 
tin citadel of virtue and the hope of the world." 
S, Doc. 45 10 



146 Life and Character of Garret A. I lobar/. 

Mr. HoiiART grew at once in professional and in public 
esteem. Had his abilities been entirely and continuously 
devoted to his profession, he would have attained the very 
first rank among its masters, for his great talents were legal 
and judicial to the last degree. In all his business life he 
never had use for any lawyer but a "close lawyer." But 
the public and the great business interest would not allow 
Mr. HobarT to practice his profession as he would then 
have desired. He was ever pursued with offers of office and 
(if business. He was sought with proffers of opportunitv 
which other gifted men strove for in vain. 

Before he was 27 years of age he had been the legal coun- 
sel of his cit) and his county and was being asked to go to 
the legislature to mold the laws. He was elected to the as- 
sembly and afterwards to the senate of New Jersey. What- 
ever political body Mr. HobarT entered, he was placed at 
its head. Tin- N'ew Jersey assembly made him its presiding 
officer; the Xew Jersey senate made him its president; the 
State Republican executive committee made him its chair- 
man, in which capacity he conducted many of our most im- 
portant campaigns. He also represented Xew Jersey in the 
national Republican committee for many years, and nobody 
ever thought of a successor. 

Whatever Mr. HOBART did was so well done that oppor- 
tunitv. as I have said, was ever seeking him. I have never 
heard a criticism of his management of a business matter. 
Governments and courts felt secure in the management of 
their charges when in his hands. His great capacity and 
integrity, winning universal confidence, must have, as they 
did, rewarded his business efforts and discretion with 
affluence. 



Address of Mr. • Yew Jersey. 147 

In the career of Mr. Hobart there was nothing sensa- 
tional or episodical. He never sought but rather shunned 
notoriety. His aims were definite; his purpose steady as 
the granite hills; his efforts as sustained as the motions of 
the planet. To every task he brought the energ\ of a 
splendid hope. With him all objects were specific and 
evervdutv -real, and to his conviction of duty, his definite 
aim-, his tireless energy, ami steady purpose, quietly pur- 
sued, are largely due the success and honors that crowned 
his life. 

lie w.isa man of most magnificent courage, never more 
composed and hopeful than in the hour of defeat. When 
he had given to tin- service of his party ..11 his splendid 
abilities during one campaign alter another, closing with 
apparent disaster, In could regret without being east down, 
deplore and Ik- not discouraged; and even in that campaign 
in his State when he son-lit to realize the political ambi- 
when success had seemed assured until 
the last days of the contest, when the tides changed and 
new forces overwhelmed him, and his hosts of loyal friends 
were downcast and discouraged, he appeared as a rock left 
by a melting shore, which still lifts its head in majesty- 
above the waters and forms a headland about which the 
vieldino currents must edch and rebuild the broken line. 

So. too, in that sad day when he returned to his country 
leaving his beloved daughter in a foreign soil, dead on the 
threshold of womanhood; though his heart was bleeding, 
he turned the same pleasant face to the world and, while a 
drawn perhaps, the old smile was there. And at the 
List, conscious of his own approaching dissolution, when 
the soul makes the awful quen ihat most affects all that 



148 Life and Character of Carrel A. Hobart. 

live .mil die, he smiled with the fortitude and hope and 
confidence of a hero and a Christian martyr. 

Mr. Hobart was endowed with more admirable and 
enviable qualities than any one man I ever knew. All men 
agree that his was a most lovable personality. Informed 
men spoke of his acquirements; churchmen of his recti- 
tude and deep religious convictions; the philanthropist of 
his unostentatious charity; business men marveled at his 
business judgment; politicians wondered at his clear per- 
ception of the character and the value of issues; statesmen 
at his wide and ready knowledge of national and interna- 
tional affairs; and all alike at his ready powers of solution, 
readily mastering problems, however weighty and however 
intricate. Mis sympathy was as broad as the field of human 
struggle, and all classes felt its touch, so that when the 
dreaded message of his departure flashed over the country 
the bitter tear fell at every hearthstone, for all alike felt the 
loss of a friend. 

When Mr. HOBART was nominated for the Vice-Presi- 
denc) , tactions in Xewjersev at once lost their identity and 
party lines became confused. Regard for policies largely 
gave way to confidence in the man. What part of the 89,000 
majority the State gave in that election was due to the per- 
sonality of Mr. HOBART and the esteem in which he was 
held as a man can never be accurately stated, but it may be 
safely stated the result was a magnificent tribute from the 
citizenship of Xew Jersey to her gifted son — an expres- 
sion of confidence in his patriotism, abilities, and exalted 
character. 

His example has been a beneficent influence in the com- 
munity in which lie lived and died, in the State which he 



Address of Mr. Gardtu /, of \, iv Jersey. 149 

served and honored, in the nation which came to know and 
honor him, and to the civilized world, which has now heard 
of lii 111 and his life, which, in it- business energy and 
integrity, private Christian purity, and fidelity to every 
trust imposed, is a model tor all men in all countries. He 
adorned society, lent a dignity to common affairs, and ele- 
vated even' office he filled. 

He died as the Christian dies, and he will be remembered 
here; therefore he has triumphed over death "in time and 
eternity." 

O 



